Global Research

Many employees at Howard University Hospital in Washington, D.C., have reservations about taking the COVID-19 vaccine, and CEO Anita Jenkins is trying to get workers to follow her lead by getting vaccinated, according to CNN. 

The hospital, a major healthcare provider for the Black community, received 725 doses of the Pfizer vaccine Dec. 15 and expects to receive a second shipment this week. As of Dec. 18, only about 600 of the hospital’s 1,900 employees had signed up for the shots, according to Kaiser Health News.

“There is a high level of mistrust and I get it,” Ms. Jenkins told Kaiser Health News. “People are genuinely afraid of the vaccine.”

The vaccination numbers, though low, still exceeded expectations, Ms. Jenkins told CNN. An internal hospital survey of about 350 employees in early November showed that 70 percent were not willing to take the COVID-19 vaccine or would not take it immediately after it became available.

Ms. Jenkins received the shot Dec. 15 in hopes of inspiring staff to get vaccinated. She’s part of a widespread effort by healthcare experts and community leaders to combat vaccine hesitancy among Black Americans. About 35 percent of Black Americans said they probably or definitely would not get the vaccine if it was determined to be safe by scientists and widely available for free, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation study cited by CNN.

Howard University Hospital isn’t the only healthcare provider with workers who turned down the vaccine. At Doctors Hospital at Renaissance in Edinburg, Texas, so many workers declined the COVID-19 vaccine that the hospital offered doses to other medical workers in the region, according to ProPublica.

The hospital received 5,850 doses of the vaccine, and it quickly became clear that not enough people eligible for the vaccine, like staff who work directly with COVID-19 patients, were opting to get it, DHR Health CMO Robert Martinez, MD, told ProPublica.

“You start to see similar numbers across the country, all this mistrust and misinformation,” Dr. Martinez said.

After the first day of distribution, DHR reached out to other hospitals and healthcare facilities in the region to offer doses of the vaccine. ProPublica reported that the vaccine ended up going to non-medical personnel as well, including state Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr. He told ProPublica he was invited to take the vaccine by DHR after officials explained to him that all eligible workers who wanted the vaccine received it.

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Featured image is from Viacheslav Lopatin | Credit: scaliger – stock.adobe.com

The British government has contracted two firms to develop COVID ‘freedom passports’, that would be used to segregate society between those who have been tested or vaccinated against COVID and those who have not.

While the government is still saying that it will not introduce such a system, the firms have been given instructions to develop an app based system to integrate a QR code linking to a digital passport.

The QR code would be used to gain entry into pubs, clubs, venues, cinemas, basically anywhere in public.

“After scanning in the code, the venue could refuse entry to those without a recent negative result,” the Daily Mail notes.

The ‘negative Covid-19 test certification’ plans were discovered on the UK Government’s contracts finder.

The site shows that in November a £42,000 contract was awarded to a company called Netcompany UK to develop a ‘Covid-19 Certification/Passport MVP’ (minimum viable product’).

Another contract for £34,000 was awarded to Hub Company to develop an app that would include a personal QR code for COVID tests.

“It is about looking at ways we could use this in future,’ a Department of Health source claimed, adding “It is looking at whether it would be possible.”

“There are no plans to introduce immunity passports,” the source also claimed, echoing previous government assurances.

We previously reported, back in November, on the government’s active plans to develop a QR code system to use as an ‘immunity passport’.

The report, stemming from sources close to the government, noted that

“Those who refuse to get the Covid-19 jab would likely be refused entry to venues, as part of the same proposals.”

Other reports have suggested that an app already used prominently in the UK by people to book doctor and hospital appointments could implement a vaccination status section that will show whether a person has taken the coronavirus jab or not, and that businesses may use it to refuse entry to those who have not.

Government officials have previously signalled that the system could be integrated with the much maligned NHS ‘track and trace’ app.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock, who has repeatedly refused to rule out making vaccination mandatory for all UK citizens, previously announced that ‘immunity passports’ could be rolled out for those who have antibodies against the virus, allowing them to participate in society.

The system would be similar in nature to that being considered by Ticketmaster, who it was revealed are considering making customers prove they’ve had the vaccine or a negative coronavirus test before allowing them to purchase tickets.

Ticketmaster later clarified that a final decision on such measures would be up to event organizers but that they were still mulling over the implementation of the system.

The spectre of so called ‘immunity passports’ stretches beyond Britain. Recently, the government in Ontario, Canada admitted that it is exploring ‘immunity passports’ in conjunction with restrictions on travel and access to social venues for the unvaccinated.

Last week, Israel announced that citizens who get the COVID-19 vaccine will be given ‘green passports’ that will enable them to attend venues and eat at restaurants.

A litany of other government and travel industry figures in both the US, Britain and beyond have suggested that ‘COVID passports’ are coming in order for ‘life to get back to normal’.

Sam Grant, campaign manager at the civili liberties advocacy group Liberty has warned that “any form of immunity passport risks creating a two-tier system in which some of us have access to freedoms and support while others are shut out.”

“These systems could result in people who don’t have immunity potentially being blocked from essential public services, work or housing – with the most marginalised among us hardest hit,” Grant further warned.

While some see the idea of ‘immunity passports’ as antithetical to a free society, others support travel bans for the unvaccinated, and are begging for the health passes to be implemented:

What a bullshitting bastard. So in the blink of an eye, our freedoms we took for granted will have to be proven by a vaccine passport, which enables us to move freely. And at one point, we were conspiracy nutters. It appears we were right all along. https://t.co/S9lhB9Fm6m

— LordBilderberg #KBF (@LBilderberg) December 7, 2020

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Featured image is from Steve Watson via NWO Report

The Ohio-class nuclear submarine USS Georgia along with the guided-missile cruisers USS Port Royal and USS Philippine Sea transited the Strait of Hormuz and entered the Persian Gulf, the US Navy announced on December 21.

The guided-missile submarine USS Georgia is capable of carrying up to 154 Tomahawk land-attack cruise missiles. The submarine can also be configured to host up to 66 Special Operations Force. If there is such a decision by the US leadership, the submarine will allow to deploy groups of saboteurs to hit targets on the Iranian coast or attack Iranian ships.

The increase of the US military presence in the Gulf comes amid tensions with Iran that reached a new height following the recent assassination of a top Iranian nuclear scientist near Tehran. Just on December 20, eight rockets were fired at the Us Embassy in Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone. The strike caused damage to buildings and cars in the area near the embassy. To repel the strike, the US military employed C-RAM air defense system, which was deployed in Iraq together with Patriot surface-to-air missiles earlier in 2020.

Expectedly, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo blamed Iranian-backed forces for the attack. MSM and ‘anonymous sources’ that they quote regularly express ‘concerns’ that Iran may use the anniversary of the assassination of General Qasem Solemani to conduct a symbolic attack on US interest in the region. Any kind of such attack or even the ‘possibility’ of such attack could be easily used by the Trump administration as a pretext for a new round of active actions against Iran.

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MEMORANDUM FOR: The President-elect

FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)

SUBJECT: Attempts to Sucker You Into Russia-Bashing

Dear President-elect Biden,

“Fool Me Once …” You may recall that President George W. Bush could not remember the last part of that aphorism. No matter. It turned out that — on Iraq — Bush was not fooled by bad intelligence. Rather, he and Vice President Dick Cheney were determined to attack Iraq and asked malleable former colleagues of ours to manufacture intelligence to “justify” that catastrophic war.

It was so bad that Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Jay Rockefeller described prewar intelligence as “unsubstantiated, contradicted, or even non-existent.” James Clapper, who was in charge of imagery analysis, admits in his memoir that the Bush/Cheney pressure to document a rogue WMD program in Iraq was so intense that “intelligence officers, including me, were so eager to help that we found what wasn’t really there.” (Emphasis added) .

That coterie of “intelligence officers” — first and foremost CIA Director George Tenet and his protegé Michael Morell — were able to pull the wool over the eyes of enough members of Congress to grease the skids for unnecessary war. Many of the latest crop of intelligence leaders bubbled up to the top for services rendered under the malleable Tenet, and seem to have adopted his flexible attitude toward truth.

It is a safe bet that some of them are responsible for the recent “anonymous” leaks feeding the current media frenzy about what we shall call “Russian hacking 2.0”.

We urge you not to rise to the bait — the more so, since Russia is the target this time around.

‘Russian Hacking 1:0’ — a Proven Fraud

You may be unaware that horse’s-mouth testimony given on Dec. 5, 2017 to the House Intelligence Committee gave the lie to claims — still widely taken as gospel truth by consumers of major media — that there is persuasive technical evidence that Russia hacked the DNC emails that WikiLeakspublished on July 22, 2016. There is no such evidence.

We Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity wrote to the president before the Iraq war to let him know that our former colleagues were playing fast and loose with the “intelligence,” which was conjured up to “justify” the invasion. With that painful experience behind us, it was not difficult to spot the lies about Russia “hacking” the DNC emails.

Four years ago we warned, in somewhat technical — but easily understandable terms — why the alleged Russian hacking of the DNC would have been impossible without the National Security Agency detecting it. We were helped by revelations from Edward Snowden, the expertise of two former technical directors at NSA (members of VIPS), and, not least, by applying the principles of science, which — thank goodness — are impervious to political pressure. See our MEMORANDUM of Dec. 12, 2016.

Proving a Negative

It proved difficult, of course, to prove a negative, particularly in the face of copious commentary and pseudo-analysis bereft of supporting data — for example, the evidence-impoverished, misnomered “Intelligence Community Assessment” of Jan. 6, 2017.

We had to wait two and a half years, from Dec. 2017 to May 2020, for the House Intelligence Committee to publish the sworn testimony of Shawn Henry, head of the DNC-hired cyber security firm CrowdStrike. (For reasons best known to ex-FBI Director James Comey, the FBI deferred to CrowdStrike to perform the forensics on what Sen. John McCain was calling an “act of war” by Russia.)

In short, three years ago Mr. Henry admitted under oath that there was no technical evidence that Russia, or anyone else, hacked the DNC and exfiltrated those damaging emails.

What he said in his sworn testimony appears to be as close as one can get to proving the negative on this very key issue. If this is news to you, please check with your advisors. It may be not too surprising that the major media have suppressed that news since May. We would be disappointed to learn, though, that no one saw fit to tell you of Shawn Henry’s testimony.

As far as we can tell, you have been careful to avoid joining — lemming-like — the “Russians-did-it-again” chorus. For fresh insight on the current media frenzy, you may wish to skim through an article published Friday morning on “Russian Hacking 2.0” and what seems to be afoot.

We are hoping that you will continue to avoid putting your foot in the mousetrap being laid for you to make it more difficult for your administration to deal in a sensible way with Russia. There are a whole lot of people — in intelligence, the media, and the weapons industry who are determined to get you off on the wrong foot with President Putin — for reasons that will be obvious to you.

We stand ready to support you with objective, tell-it-like-it-is analysis. Our record speaks for itself. Links to VIPS’s earlier memoranda, starting with our same-day critique of Colin Powell’s UN speech shortly before the war on Iraq, can be found here.

FOR THE STEERING GROUP

Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity

William Binney, Technical Director, World Geopolitical & Military Analysis, NSA; co-founder, SIGINT Automation Research Center (ret.)

Marshall Carter-Tripp, Foreign Service Officer and Division Director, State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research (ret.)

Mike Gravel, former Adjutant, top secret control officer, Communications Intelligence Service; special agent of the Counter Intelligence Corps and former United States Senator

Edward Loomis, NSA Cryptologic Computer Scientist and a Technical Director (ret.)

Ray McGovern, former US Army infantry/intelligence officer & CIA analyst; Presidential briefer (ret.)

Elizabeth Murray, Deputy National Intelligence Officer for the Near East & CIA political analyst (ret.)

Todd E. Pierce, MAJ, US Army Judge Advocate (ret.)

Kirk Wiebe, Senior Analyst, SIGINT Automation Research Center, NSA (ret.)

Ann Wright, U.S. Army Reserve Colonel (ret) and former U.S. Diplomat who resigned in 2003 in opposition to the Iraq War

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Featured image is from OneWorld

Echoing calls from global grassroots campaigners, the top United Nations anti-torture official on Tuesday asked President Donald Trump to pardon jailed WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who is languishing in London’s notorious Belmarsh prison as he awaits his fate regarding possible extradition to the United States to stand trial for what critics say are unwarranted espionage charges. 

In a letter to the outgoing American president, Nils Melzer, the U.N. special rapporteur on torture, noted that “Assange has been arbitrarily deprived of his liberty for the past 10 years,” a “high price to pay for the courage to publish true information about government misconduct throughout the world.”

“I visited Mr. Assange in Belmarsh,” wrote Melzer, “and I can attest to the fact that his health has seriously deteriorated, to the point where his life is now in danger. Critically, Mr. Assange suffers from a documented respiratory condition which renders him extremely vulnerable to the Covid-19 pandemic that has recently broken out in the prison where he is being held.”

Melzer continued:

I ask you to pardon Mr. Assange, because he is not, and has never been, an enemy of the American people. His organization, WikiLeaks, fights secrecy and corruption throughout the world and, therefore, acts in the public interest both of the American people and of humanity as a whole… Mr. Assange has never published false information.

The cause for any reputational harm that may have resulted from his publications is not to be found in any misconduct on his part, but in the very misconduct which he exposed… Prosecuting Mr. Assange for publishing true information about serious official misconduct, whether in America or elsewhere, would amount to “shooting the messenger” rather than correcting the problem he exposed. This would be incompatible with the core values of justice, rule of law, and press freedom, as reflected in the American Constitution and international human rights instruments ratified by the United States.

Melzer appealed to Trump’s campaign promise to “pursue an agenda of fighting government corruption and misconduct,” writing that “because allowing the prosecution of Mr. Assange to continue would mean that, under your legacy, telling the truth about such corruption and misconduct has become a crime.”

UN Special Rapporteur on torture has published a letter requesting a presidential pardon for Julian Assange https://t.co/YAFuOiJtZN

— Freedom of the Press (@FreedomofPress) December 22, 2020

“In pardoning Mr Assange,” he added, “you would send a clear message of justice, truth, and humanity to the American people and to the world. You would rehabilitate a courageous man who has suffered injustice, persecution, and humiliation for more than a decade, simply for telling the truth.”

“Last but not least, you would give back to Mr. Assange’s two young sons the loving father they need and look up to,” Melzer wrote.

“For these reasons, I respectfully appeal to you to pardon Julian Assange,” he concluded. “I believe that, after a decade of persecution, this man’s unjust suffering must end now.”

According to the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, the 49-year-old Australian has been arbitrarily deprived of his freedom since his arrest on December 7, 2010. Since then he has been subjected to house arrest, imprisonment in Britain, and seven years in political asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.

While none of the people implicated in war crimes and other misdeeds revealed by WikiLeaks in the Afghan War Diary, Iraq War Logs, Guantánamo Files, the “Collateral Murder” viedo, and other leaks have been seriously punished, Assange and Chelsea Manning—the U.S. Army whistleblower who provided much of the published material—have faced the full fury of the U.S. government.

Assange is due back in court on January 4, when he will likely learn whether he will be extradited. If found guilty in the U.S. of violating the 1917 Espionage Act and Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, Assange could be sentenced to spend the rest of his life behind bars, most likely in a Colorado supermax prison, which a former warden called “a fate worse than death.”

In recent months there have been growing calls from activists and public figures around the world for Trump to pardon Assange before leaving office next month. In addition to Melzer, former National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden, filmmaker Oliver Stone, actress and activist Pamela Anderson, and other leading press freedom advocates are among those urging Trump to act.

There is also a bipartisan push for Trump to pardon for Snowden, who is living in exile in Russia as a result of releasing classified documents regarding the U.S. government’s global mass surveillance program.

Democrats silence on a pardon for Edward Snowden is both shameful and bad strategy. He's seen as a hero around the world, and especially by younger voters. Letting the right pretend to be the true defenders of human rights makes me sick to my stomach. https://t.co/E85moiKhKE

— Evan Greer (@evan_greer) December 22, 2020

Trump is reportedly considering pardons for both Assange and Snowden.

From Common Dreams: Our work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. Feel free to republish and share widely.

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Featured image is from Prachatai/Flickr/cc

Virtually always when accusations surface against nations free from US control, no credible evidence supports them.

It’s because what’s claimed is fabricated.

In legitimate tribunals, charges without evidence backing them are dismissed straightaway.

Not in the US and other Western states, especially when targeting Russia, China, Iran, and other nations on Washington’s target list for regime change.

On December 13, Russian intelligence was again accused of conducting a major cyberattack against US private organizations, the Treasury, Commerce, and other departments in Washington.

The timing was suspicious, raising an obvious red flag, coming weeks before Biden/Harris replace Trump in January.

It’s unclear precisely what, if anything, happened.

All that’s known is what US officials claim. They long ago lost credibility, why nothing they say should be taken at face value.

What’s going is all about setting the stage for tough US actions against Russia when Biden/Harris take over in January — despite no evidence of unlawful behavior by Moscow against US interests.

Accusations without verifiable evidence backing them are baseless.

Throughout Russian Federation history over the last three decades, its ruling authorities never acted unlawfully toward the US — in stark contrast to Washington’s endless war by other means on all its invented adversaries, along with its preemptive hot wars.

On Sunday, Biden/Harris chief of stafff Ron Klain said their regime when installed in January will act against alleged Russian hackers, and “not just (by) sanctions,” adding:

“(S)teps” will be taken “to degrade the capacity of foreign actors to engage in this sort of attack.”

Reuters reported that options include “financial penalties and retaliatory hacks on Russian infrastructure, people familiar with the matter” indicated.

Congressional Russiaphobes demand a tough response despite no evidence of malign actions by Moscow against US interests.

The accusation was invented, likely by US dark forces to assure Biden/Harris straightaway begins on the wrong foot with Russia when they take office — made possible by brazen election theft.

Moscow understands the futility of attempting to foster cooperative relations with the US and West.

Its good will is consistently rebuffed by extrajudicial toughness.

Virtually everyone in Washington and other Western countries know Russia poses no threat to their security and other interests.

So they pretend otherwise, including hardline Dem Senator Mark Warner, calling the phony Russian cyberattack claim “an invasion,” adding:

“This is in that gray area between espionage and an attack. “

So Washington must let invented adversaries know “that if (we say) you t(ook) this kind of action, we and others will strike back.”

According to mentally unbalanced/over-the-top Pompeo clone Rep. Adam Schiff:

“I don’t think there’s any question that it was Russia (sic).”

Lots more likeminded neocon extremists like Schiff infest the nation’s capital, inventing reasons to bash nations free from US control.

Prospects for improved US relations with Russia, China, Iran, and other sovereign independent countries are virtually nil no matter which right wing of America’s one-party state runs things.

On Monday, Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov slammed the baseless US accusation, saying:

Claims of cyberattacks on the US “ha(ve) nothing to do with us, because Russia is not involved in such attacks…including this.”

“We state this officially and decisively.”

“Any accusations of Russia’s involvement are absolutely unfounded and are a continuation of the kind of blind Russophobia that is resorted to following any incident…”

“As for some US actions…(they) have recently been very unpredictable, so we cannot say anything in this regard.”

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin also slammed the US, accusing its officials of “politicizing” cybersecurity, inventing reasons to bash its adversaries.

According to former US National Security Agency (NSA) technical director-turned whistleblower Bill Binney, CIA hacking tools can create the illusion of cyberattacks on US interests to falsely blame Washington’s adversaries for what they had nothing to do with.

Notably, Treasury Secretary Mnuchin said “we do not see any break-in to our classified systems.”

“Our unclassified systems have been accessed. (W)e are completely on top of this.”

If Russia or other technologically capable nations wanted to penetrated classified US systems, they would have done it successfully.

Mnuchin’s statement is virtual proof of no Russian cyberattack as falsely claimed.

It’s the latest in a long line of fabricated US accusations against nations unwilling to sell their soul to Washington’s hegemonic interests.

A Final Comment

Outgoing Trump regime AG William Barr — a figure Paul Craig Roberts slammed for selling out DJT — joined with other Russiophobes in falsely blaming the Kremlin for cyberattacking the US despite no evidence proving it because there is none.

Barr also falsely claimed that Election 2020 was open, free and fair — ignoring brazen fraud.

At a Monday news conference, he was largely tight-lipped in saying the following:

“From the information I have, I agree with Secretary Pompeo’s assessment” — referring to his dubious claims about Russian hacking.

“It certainly appears to be the Russians, but I’m not going to discuss it beyond that.”

When accusations are unsupported by verifiable evidence, they’re groundless.

Suspiciously timed claims of cyberattacking the US by Russia appear all about preventing Biden/Harris from pursuing improved relations with Moscow — it’s virtually certain they wouldn’t do anyway other than perhaps tinkering around the edges of bilateral relations.

US hostility toward Russia and other sovereign independent countries is longstanding.

No evidence suggests a softening of this position ahead — no matter which right wing of the US one-party state runs things.

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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

On December 14th, two excellent news-reports were belatedly published about some of the massive corruption that was behind the initial U.S. federal coronavirus-relief law, the CARES Act, and about U.S. Senators of both Parties now intending to include such corruption in the next one. (NOTE: This present news-report may be viewed as a confirmation, and a further explanation, of what I was predicting in my article on April 22nd, “Why Post-Coronavirus America Will Have Massive Poverty”. What that was predicting is being confirmed in the two recent news-reports that are cited here.)

Regarding the CARES Act, J. Robert Downen headlined in the Houston Chronicle on December 14th, “Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church got $4.4 million in federal PPP loans”, and he reported that “Lakewood received a $4.4 million loan through the Paycheck Protection Program, a part of the federal CARES Act that provided loans to pay employee wages or for other basic operational costs such as utilities. The program marked the first time federal lawmakers allowed for direct financial assistance to houses of worship. … More than 1,000 religious groups in Texas received hundreds of millions of dollars to retain a combined 59,000 jobs, the Chronicle reported in July.”

At around the start of the coronavirus-epidemic, the Texas state government had announced, on 24 January 2020, that “Our workforce continues to grow and is now 14,188,100 Texans strong”, and this means that the CARES Act’s breaking-of-precedent (“the first time federal lawmakers allowed for direct financial assistance to houses of worship”) was helping to retain employment for one two-hundred-and-fortieth of employed Texans, and therefore it couldn’t even possibly have produced any significant impact upon the rate of unemployment in Texas, but only improved the re-election chances of public officials in Texas, by its purchasing from Texas’s preachers (who have lots of political clout in that state) a more favorable attitude toward those incumbent governmental office-holders, who had provided this largesse, upon their special interest.

Downen’s article also listed 16 Texas corporations (such as “Percheron Holdings LLC”) which had been given federal loans of at least $10,000,000 each; and, so, the federal Government’s largesse wasn’t only to ‘non-profits’, nor to religious organizations.

However, if the actual intention of the CARES Act had been to help workers instead of to help their bosses, then nothing would have been funneled through the corporation down to its workers, but everything would instead have been paid directly to each individual worker, and any corporation that was suffering losses during the epidemic could separately have applied to the U.S. Small Business Administration after-the-fact, for loan-assistance, in order for that corporation (or church, or etc.) to be able to stay in business, if they otherwise would have gone bust.

In other words: all CARES-Act monies that went to corporations were funneling their benefits to workers by way of and through their employers, and thus were really political pay-offs to the richest, in order for political incumbents to be able to retain their seats as governmental officials. A ‘democracy’ like this is actually a kleptocracy. And that news-report in the Houston Chronicle appeared only after the 2020 ‘election’, not before it. So: it was no help to voters in preparation for the November ‘elections’.

Also on December 14th, the great investigative journalist David Sirota’s blog headlined “SCOOP: Stimulus Bill Bails Out Defense Contractors, Denies Direct Payments to Families”and reported that, “Buried in the new 525-page stimulus bill is a provision granting military contractors benefits that are being denied to workers and small businesses across the country.” He and his reporter Julia Rock opened by noting that, “Earlier this year, Republican senators slammed the idea of spending money to pay Americans not to work during the pandemic. Only a few months later, a group of GOP senators has signed onto stimulus legislation that would authorize the government to pay idle defense contractors to not work, even as those contractors rack up big profits during the pandemic. Meanwhile, the same bill excludes bipartisan provisions authorizing direct payments to millions of Americans struggling to survive.” They reported that Democratic Party leaders in Congress (especially West Virginia’s U.S. Senator Joe Manchin) were quietly working in the background in order to be able to pass this new corruption into law, and were no less corrupt than their bolder Republican colleagues were in in whoring themselves to ‘defense’ contractors — the “Military-Industrial Complex” or “MIC,” which basically writes America’s international sanctions, and other U.S. foreign policies, so as to maximize the global sales of U.S.-made military weaponry.

All of this news is “belated,” however, unless the major American ‘news’-media, such as the Washington Post and the New York Times and CNN and Fox and ABC and CBS and NBC and The Atlantic — all of which are owned and controlled by America’s fewer than 1,000 billionaires — will decide (which they never yet have done) to make a public issue out of the real issue here, which is the question of whether or not funneling public benefits through employers constitutes anything else than the corruption of any democracy and the installation of an aristocracy of the super-rich replacing that democracy of the people by a dictatorship of the aristocrats.

This is a fundamental issue, and it is always being simply avoided, banned to publish. (In fact, a recent law-review article, which was titled “The ‘Small Business’ Myth of the Paycheck Protection Program”, actually defended what had happened by saying that that program, which is commonly acronymed “PPP,” had been sold to the public as being intended to protect workers in small businesses, but never was intended to do that. This article claimed that “The misinformed condemnation of large companies obscured the fact that Congress had designed a flawed program with limited ability to help small businesses.”

But it wasn’t ‘misinformed’, and these weren’t merely ‘flaws’. In fact, lobbyists for huge corporations had heavily lobbied and paid Representatives and Senators to lard the entire CARES Act with huge give-aways to large corporations and to the investors in those corporations; and, as a result, Wall Street boomed even while unemployment soared. “Congress had designed a flawed program” because they were being paid to produce those “flaws” in it. Academia is, itself, often either grossly incompetent, or else part of the corruption, and therefore it should be viewed as being part of the ‘news’-media, itself — in other words: propaganda.)

Perhaps all of America’s ‘news’-media ought to be nationalized and donated to a public trust which is headed by a board of directors which consists of 100 certifiably low-income Americans who are otherwise (than their being in the lowest-wealth category) selected randomly from the general population, and who will, then, in turn, select and fire the top officials of all of the nation’s largest twenty media corporations, so as to make the news-media accurately inform the general public, instead of to continue deceiving the public in the ways that the super-rich — both liberal and conservative — collectively want the public to be deceived.

Maybe that would do it. Maybe that would restore democracy, to the United States of America. Democracy is impossible without there being an accurately informed public. And, in the U.S., the public is instead systematically deceived, so as to hide from them what the billionaires of both of the nation’s political Parties want the public not to know, or not to understand. That can’t be a democracy.

In an aristocracy, everything is just a racket. Even a covid-19 relief bill is.

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US Cyber Spy Scandal: Pompeo Blames Russia, Trump Blames China. Why?

By Andrew Korybko, December 22, 2020

Many people are confused after President Trump contradicted Secretary of State Pompeo’s claim that Russia was behind what’s been described by many as one of the most intrusive cyber espionage operations against America in history after he publicly suggested that China might have been the culprit instead and even downplayed the significance of this extensive security breach.

The Dystopian Western World

By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, December 22, 2020

As the second decade of the 21st century comes to an end, democracy and free speech no longer exist in the Western World.  In all its respects, Western civilization no longer exists.

U.S.-Israel Security Assistance Authorization Act: US Congress Votes $4 Billion to Israel for 2021

By Alison Weir, December 22, 2020

Congress just voted billions of dollars of U.S. tax money to Israel, No mainstream US media appear to have told Americans that both houses of Congress just voted massive aid to Israel, a tiny country with a long record of human rights abuses, violations of law, systemic racism, and damage to Americans.

Pakistan Returns $1bn to Saudi Arabia and Turns to China for Loan Assistance

By Areeb Ullah, December 22, 2020

Cash-strapped Pakistan has returned $1bn to Saudi Arabia as the second instalment of a $3bn soft loan, and is turning to China to help pay the rest. Saudi Arabia has historically never asked Pakistan to repay its loans. But earlier this year, the kingdom broke diplomatic norms and pushed Islamabad to repay the $3.3bn loan after Pakistan’s foreign minister admonished Saudi Arabia for not criticising India’s crackdown in Kashmir.

Seriously? Gunshot Deaths Counted Among COVID-19 Fatalities in Colorado

By Stephen Green, December 22, 2020

A pair of gunshot deaths that counted among COVID fatalities have earned the ire of a county coroner in Colorado. Grand County, in the sparsely-populated (but breathtaking) northwestern quarter of the state, is home to fewer than 15,000 people and has been lucky enough to endure only a handful of deaths related to the Wuhan Virus.

The Christmas Truce of 1914 and Other Unlearned Lessons from World War I

By Dr. Gary G. Kohls, December 22, 2020

Five months into the miserable death and destruction of the perpetually dead-locked trench war (featuring the now-infamous mass slaughter via artillery, machine gun and poison gas weaponry), the first Christmas of the war on the Western Front came around.

“Walk the Streets of Damascus, and Listen to the People Concerning US Sanctions and Aggression Against Syria”

By Janice Kortkamp and Steven Sahiounie, December 22, 2020

There was a multi-pronged effort on the part of the US, UK, France, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Qatar to take control over Syria, and when that failed, to divide and conquer it. This effort, begun during the GW Bush administration and flaring into violence during Obama’s administration, continues under Donald Trump.

What if the Christ Child Had Been Born in the American Police State?

By John W. Whitehead, December 22, 2020

Those nativity scenes were a pointed attempt to remind the modern world that the narrative about the birth of Jesus is one that speaks on multiple fronts to a world that has allowed the life, teachings and crucifixion of Jesus to be drowned out by partisan politics, secularism, materialism and war, all driven by a manipulative shadow government called the Deep State.

FDA Investigates Allergic Reactions to Pfizer COVID Vaccine After More Healthcare Workers Hospitalized

By Children’s Health Defense, December 22, 2020

The FDA is investigating allergic reactions in “multiple states.” The agency acknowledged the reactions may have been caused by PEG, a compound in the Pfizer vaccine that CHD previously told the FDA could put millions of people at risk.

Chang’e-5 Completes Lunar Trip, More Space Missions Planned

By Deng Xiaoci and Fan Anqi, December 22, 2020

On the freezing grassland in Siziwang Banner, North China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, a Chinese national flag was placed right next to the re-entry capsule of Chang’e-5 lunar probe, whose epic predawn landing on Thursday provided the perfect climax to China’s latest moon missions—an epic moon sample return mission.

Notre site Web en français, mondialisation.ca

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Nuestro sitio web en español, globalizacion.ca

The decorations and gifts of Christmas are one of our connections to a Christian culture that has held Western civilization together for 2,000 years. 

In our culture the individual counts. This permits an individual person to put his or her foot down, to take a stand on principle, to become a reformer and to take on injustice.

This empowerment of the individual is unique to Western civilization. It has made the individual a citizen equal in rights to all other citizens, protected from tyrannical government by the rule of law and free speech. These achievements are the products of centuries of struggle, but they all flow from the teaching that God so values the individual’s soul that he sent his son to die so we might live. By so elevating the individual, Christianity gave him a voice.

Formerly only those with power had a voice. But in Western civilization people with integrity have a voice. So do people with a sense of justice, of honor, of duty, of fair play. Reformers can reform, investors can invest, and entrepreneurs can create commercial enterprises, new products and new occupations.

The result was a land of opportunity. The United States attracted immigrants who shared our values and reflected them in their own lives. Our culture was absorbed by a diverse people who became one.

In recent decades we have lost sight of the historic achievement that empowered the individual. The religious, legal and political roots of this great achievement are no longer reverently taught in high schools, colleges and universities or respected by our government. The voices that reach us through the millennia and connect us to our culture are being silenced by “Identity Politics,” “political correctness” and the war against “white culture.” Prayer has been driven from schools and Christian religious symbols from public life. As Christian tradition fades as the basis of behavior, barbarity will gather more strength and reign over us.

Christianity is being gradually marginalized. Each year it becomes more difficult to find a Christmas card that says “Merry Christmas” instead of “Seasons Greetings.” In place of Christmas carols we get Hollywood Christmas songs. In some churches Christianity is being transmuted into Christian Zionism and the worship of Israel. Others fly LGBTQ and BLM flags. We are approaching a time when a Christian Christmas cannot be celebrated as it is not inclusive in a diverse society and therefore is politically incorrect if not a hate crime.

Constitutional protections have been diminished by hegemonic political ambitions. Indefinite detention, torture, and murder are now acknowledged practices of the United States government. The historic achievement of due process has been rolled back. Tyranny has re-emerged.

Diversity at home and hegemony abroad are consuming values and are dismantling the culture and the rule of law. There is plenty of room for cultural diversity in the world, but not within a single country. A Tower of Babel has no culture. A person cannot be a Christian one day, a pagan the next and a Muslim the day after. A hodgepodge of cultural and religious values provides no basis for law – except the raw power of the pre-Christian past.

All Americans have a huge stake in Christianity. Whether or not we are individually believers in Christ, we are beneficiaries of the moral doctrine that has curbed power and protected the weak.

Power is the horse ridden by evil. In the 20th century the horse was ridden hard, and the 21st century shows an increase in pace. Millions of people were exterminated in the 20th century by wars that served the ambitions of political leaders and ideological movements. Many were murdered simply because they were members of a class or race that had been demonized by intellectuals and political authority. In the beginning years of the 21st century, hundreds of thousands of Muslims in seven countries have been murdered and millions displaced in order to serve the neoconservatives’ agenda of extending Washington and Israel’s hegemony.

Power that is secularized and cut free of civilizing traditions is not limited by moral and religious scruples. Washington’s drive for hegemony over US citizens and the rest of the world is based entirely on the exercise of force and is resurrecting unaccountable power.

Christianity’s emphasis on the worth of the individual makes such power as Lenin claimed, and Washington now claims, unthinkable. Be we religious or be we not, our celebration of Christ’s birthday celebrates a religion that made us masters of our souls and of our political life on Earth. Such a religion as this is worth holding on to even by atheists.

As we enter into 2021, Western civilization, the product of thousands of years of striving, is in decline. Degeneracy is everywhere before our eyes. As the West sinks into tyranny and degeneracy, will Western peoples defend their liberty and their souls, or will they sink into the tyranny, which again has raised its ugly and all devouring head?

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Dr. Paul Craig Roberts writes on his blog site, PCR Institute for Political Economy, where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

In 1935, reflecting on the creed of productivity which prevailed in modern technological societies, Bertrand Russell, philosopher, pacifist and devout humanist wrote that:

“I think that there is far too much work done in the world, that immense harm is caused by the belief that work is virtuous, and that what needs to be preached in modern industrial countries is quite different from what always has been preached.”

‘In Praise of Idleness and other essays’ is a collection of striking power and originality. Whereas the receieved wisdom of his era held that virtue consisted in yielding to work, monotony and routine, Russell maintained it was not the sole end of life, that beyond work, people needed leisure and pleasure in order to fully live, that what was sought to truly advance society and fortify the human condition was the “organized diminution of work.”

Through the 1920s and 30s Fordism advocated the exact opposite and the cult of productivity began to exert a strong hold on economic and social organization in Europe, the USA and Soviet Union. In the story Brave New World, Aldous Huxley envisioned a society of tyrannical collectivism which raised hell on Earth. In this dehumanizing, nihilistic oblivion, Henry Ford was worshipped as a deity and the fundamentalism of mass production crept in to all spheres of life, ridigly classifying people whose whole lives were planned out on a callow basis of crude economic worth. It was a study in how powerful forces of sublimation and repression incarnate in the edifice of the modern world mutilate our most vital, human instincts and wrench us from our roots.

Huxley’s main belief was that technological ‘progress’ had empowered the worst bureaucrats to assimilate citizens in to a sophisticated machine of repression and control which blocked and frustrated their freedom. Although, as Russell observes, in truth “with modern technique it would be possible to distribute leisure justly without injury to civilization“, the owners of the means of production in the capitalist economy absorb modern technique in to their arsenal against collective liberation. It is not in their interests to free us from bonds.

Of the proprietary class, Russell says:

“their desire for comfortable idleness is historically the source of the whole gospel of work. The last thing they have ever wished is that others should follow their example. “

That is to say that freedom and unfreedom aren’t opposites. The affluence and freedom of the proprietors actively depends on the subjugation of workers who create value.

Throughout his life Bertrand Russell was keenly involved with communities of students, activists and workers who organized against imperialism and the war machine. His belief that people could work less and live more was part of his belief that the economic system could be harnessed to more altruistic ends, justified more reasonably, attuned to satisfy people’s needs and fit to unleash their inherent creative power, instead of conforming to bourgeois imperatives.

Lately Professor Hawking has weighed in on the question of modern social organization and proffered the view that people need not be scared of machines, but ought to be wary of the systems and people who wield them. Why be scared of the unknown power of machines when what we know about the people who own them is far, far scarier?

Hawking said:

“If machines produce everything we need, the outcome will depend on how things are distributed. Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality.”

Hawking’s view is much like Russell’s and would be called post-scarcity economics. The crux of this view is that competition for resources is not a necessary feature of an economy, that material abundance may be universal instead of there being a socially imposed monopoly of access, regulated by money and work. Like trickle-down theory, scarcity economics is not necessarily based in reality. It goes without saying that obviously we need to find a way reach this economy and mode of production in accordance with environmental protection, which models after the Industrial Revolution got disastrously wrong.

The challenge of the future is to make machines our allies and not our jailers.

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Government produced safety instructions for a new coronavirus vaccine indicate that it should not be used by pregnant or breast-feeding mothers and children. In addition, they state that it is unknown what effect the COVID-19 mRNA vaccine will have on fertility.

The ten-page “Reg 174 Information for UK Healthcare Professionals” describes the vaccine, how it is to be stored, diluted, and administered, and the trial studies carried out to test it. To be effective, the vaccine is supposed to be administered twice.  In a section called “Fertility, pregnancy and lactation,” the guide says there is “no or limited data” on the vaccine. Therefore, it is not recommending its use for pregnant women.

“Animal reproductive toxicity studies have not been completed. COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine BNT162b2 is not recommended during pregnancy,” the guide states in section 4.6.

“For women of childbearing age, pregnancy should be excluded before vaccination.”

The guide also advises that women should avoid becoming pregnant for the first two months after their Covid-19 shots.

“In addition, women of childbearing age should be advised to avoid pregnancy for at least 2 months after their second dose,” it says.

Because it is still unknown whether or not the vaccine can be transmitted to a breast-feeding infant through his or her mother’s milk, the instructions state that “a risk to the newborns/infants cannot be excluded.” Therefore, the guide specifies that the vaccine “should not be used during breast-feeding.”

But alarmingly the guide has only one thing to say about the vaccine’s impact on fertility: they don’t know if it does or doesn’t.

“It is unknown whether COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine BNT162b2 has an impact on fertility,” it states.

The guide notes that the safety of the vaccine was tested in two clinical studies. The first study enrolled 60 people aged 16 to 55, and the second involved “approximately” 44,000 people aged 12 and older. The most common negative effects of the vaccine in people over the age of 16 have been “pain at the injection site” (a muscle), experienced by over 80%, fatigue (over 60%), headache (over 50%), sore muscles (over 30%), chills (over 30%), joint pain (over 20%), and fever (over 10%). According to the guide, these side-effects “were usually mild or moderate in intensity” and went away after a few days.

Fertility fears

Earlier this week, two leading doctors wrote to the European Medicine Agency, which is responsible for the safety of vaccines, in an attempt to stop human trials of all Covid-19 vaccines, especially the Pfizer/BioNtech COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine BNT162b2 described above. Dr. Michael Yeadon, a former head of Pfizer’s respiratory research, and Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg, a health policy advisor, think that human testing is still unethical.

Among other concerns, Yeadon and Wodart warn that some of the vaccines may prevent the safe development of placentas in pregnant women, resulting in “vaccinated women essentially becoming infertile.”

“Several vaccine candidates are expected to induce the formation of humoral antibodies against spike proteins of SARS-CoV-2,” the doctors wrote.

“Syncytin-1 […] which is derived from human endogenous retroviruses (HERV) and is responsible for the development of a placenta in mammals and humans and is therefore an essential prerequisite for a successful pregnancy, is also found in homologous form in the spike proteins of SARS viruses,” they continued.

“There is no indication whether antibodies against spike proteins of SARS viruses would also act like anti-Syncytin-1 antibodies. However, if this were to be the case this would then also prevent the formation of a placenta which would result in vaccinated women essentially becoming infertile.”

The doctors suggest that because the Pfizer/BioNTech trial protocol says that “women of child-bearing potential” can take part only if they are not pregnant or breastfeeding and are using contraception, it could take “a relatively long time before a noticeable number of cases of post-vaccination infertility could be observed.”

Pfizer can’t be sued for damages

According to the U.K.’s Independent newspaper, Pfizer, the owner of the COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine BNT162b2 has been given indemnity in the United Kingdom, which means that people who suffer damage from the vaccine will not be able to sue the company.

“NHS (National Health Service) staff providing the vaccine, as well as manufactures of the drug, are also protected,” the Independent reported.

The newspaper also reported that the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine was authorised by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency on Tuesday under Section 174 of the Human Medicine Regulations 2012.

The regulation, which was altered by the British government this autumn, currently states that the ordinary “prohibitions” in Britain’s requirements for authorization “do not apply where the sale or supply of a medicinal product is authorized by the licensing authority on a temporary basis in response to the suspected or confirmed spread of— (a) pathogenic agents; (b) toxins; (c ) chemical agents; or (d) nuclear radiation, which may cause harm to human beings.”

The Independent noted that in a press conference on Wednesday, Pfizer’s U.K. managing director refused to explain why the company needed this legal protection.

“We’re not actually disclosing any of the details around any of the aspects of that agreement and specifically around the liability clauses,” said Pfizer’s Ben Osborn.

Curiously, in October the government’s Medicines & Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), posted a bid request stating that “For reasons of extreme urgency,” they seek “an Artificial Intelligence (AI) software tool to process the expected high volume of Covid-19 vaccine Adverse Drug Reaction (ADRs).” The bid goes on to explain that “it is not possible to retrofit the MHRA’s legacy systems to handle the volume of ADRs that will be generated by a Covid-19 vaccine,” and that this “represents a direct threat to patient life and public health.”

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The Ontario government’s decision to extend and expand lockdowns across the province is another big hit in a long line of crushing blows to small business owners.

“Today’s announcement guarantees the demise of thousands upon thousands of Ontario’s small businesses,” said Dan Kelly, CFIB president. “The government should have used this as an opportunity to fine-tune existing restrictions based on the data, instead of expanding this blunt measure to additional regions of the province. Workers are going to lose their jobs. Business owners and their families will see their dreams crushed and their homes lost to the banks.”

“Ontario has now expanded the most anti-small business lockdown measure in the country. No other province in Canada closes small businesses while allowing big-box stores to sell similar goods in-store. Our members are dumbfounded as to why their government continues to feel that it is safer to buy a book, bracelet or pair of shoes at Walmart or Costco than to buy the same items at their quiet, local independent retailer,” said Ryan Mallough, CFIB’s director of provincial affairs for Ontario. “The government has consistently chosen big box over small business throughout the pandemic. Today’s move puts a bow on an even merrier Christmas for Walmart and Costco at the expense of Ontario’s small retailers.”

CFIB data shows that over a third of Ontario businesses report their business will not survive a second lockdown.

CFIB recommends that the Ontario government:

• Expand small business support to:
  o Immediately top up the federal Canada Emergency Rent Subsidy (CERS) to up to 100% for businesses in lockdown zones
  o Immediately top up the federal Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy (CEWS) to up to 100% for businesses in lockdown zones
• Expand eligibility for the Ontario PPE grant to all businesses, regardless of size or sector, and substantially increase the value from the current $1,000
• Increase funding to the $600-million program for energy and property taxes to reflect the additional volume of businesses in lockdown

“Today’s grant announcement is a step in the right direction, but the province must open its wallet even more to help small businesses make it through the lockdown period,” added Kelly. “Let’s not forget that the government chose to close small businesses, so they cannot be expected to survive without full economic support.  Nothing short of 100 per cent support for affected businesses will get them to the other side of COVID-19.”

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Featured image is from The Bullet

Along with hazardous to human health ingredients in all vaccines, alleged protection afforded by Covid vaccines is dubious at best,  unsupported by evidence at worst.

BMJ calls itself a publication “intended for healthcare professions.”

According to its associate editor/pharmacologist Peter Doshi, covid vaccine trials were “not focused on answering the questions many might assume they are.”

Doshi quoted Molecular Virology and Microbiology expert Peter Hotez, saying the following:

“Ideally, you want an antiviral vaccine to do two things: first, reduce the likelihood you will get severely ill and go to the hospital, and two, prevent infection and therefore interrupt disease transmission.”

Doshi: Covid vaccines “are not actually set up to prove either.”

“None of the trials (were) designed to detect a reduction in any serious outcome such as hospital admissions, use of intensive care, or deaths.”

“Nor are the vaccines being studied to determine whether they can interrupt transmission of the virus.”

Medscape editor/molecular medicine expert Eric Topol asked: What counts as an adverse covid event?

“We’re not talking about…positive mild infection(s).”

They must be “moderate to severe illness to qualify as an event…”

Doshi explained that covid trials were structured to minimize significant numbers of severe illness because the elderly, frail, children, and individuals with allergies were screened out as participants.

Last September, Doshi and Topol said covid trials “don’t answer (what) we need to know,” adding:

Based on how trials were structured, “(w)e may not find out whether (experimental) vaccines prevent moderate or severe cases of Covid-19.”

They may only “protect (against) the most mild form of” the disease.

Individuals affected this way need no protection as it passes in a few days, normality restored routinely.

For meds to be effective, they must protect against severe symptoms.

“(T)hat’s not (what) Moderna, Pfizer and AstraZeneca” trial participants were tested for — mild symptoms alone.

“According to the protocols for their studies…a vaccine could meet (their) benchmark for success if it lowered the risk of mild Covid-19…’ ”

Their vaccines in trials were “never shown to reduce moderate or severe forms of the disease, or the risk of hospitalization, admissions to the intensive care unit or death.”

“To say a vaccine works should mean that most people no longer run the risk of getting seriously sick. That’s not what these trials…determine(d).”

“(T)here is no guarantee that reducing the risk of mild Covid-19 will also reduce the risk of moderate or severe Covid-19.”

“(S)ignificant increases in vaccination rates over the past decades have not been associated with reductions in deaths.”

“(V)accines…provid(ing) benefit(s) (for) mild” illness alone are worthless.

That’s what Pfizer, Moderna and Astra-Zeneca trials were structured to determine.

Doshi and Topol explained that “provid(ing) no benefit beyond a reduced risk of mild Covid-19 (risks) causing more discomfort than…prevent(ion).”

“Covid vaccine trials (failed) to address the aged…underrepresented minorities… children, adolescents and pregnant women since they” were excluded as participants.

“Vaccines must be thoroughly tested in all populations in which they will be used” — not so for covid trials.

Unless trials include a representative, large enough, sample of populations where they’ll be used for a long enough duration for results to be meaningful, results are meaningless.

Trials must also show whether meds in question protect against moderate and severe cases of disease.

Otherwise, results are incomplete for not addressing what’s most important to know.

Covid trials were “some of the most important (ones) in history, affecting a vast majority of the planet’s population,” said Doshi and Topol, adding:

“It’s hard to imagine how much higher the stakes (could) be to get this right. Cutting corners should not” have been allowed.

Yet that’s precisely what happened to fast-track covid vaccines to market.

What the FDA and Britain’s National Health Service permitted for mass-vaxxing against covid is playing fast and loose with the health and well-being of countless numbers of individuals being vaccinated.

Forewarned is forearmed.

A Final Comment 

The vast majority of individuals diagnosed with covid may, in fact, be ill from seasonal flu/influenza.

It’s because up to 90% of PRC tests  produce false positive results.

The vast majority of individuals ill from covid or seasonal flu/influenza have mild symptoms, not more serious ones that may require hospitalization.

Yet a mind-manipulation campaign has been underway for months — notably by government sources and and establishment media — to convince people to be vaxxed with what they don’t need and may be extremely harmful.

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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image source

New research released today by Global Justice Now examines the history of some of the leading corporations producing coronavirus medicines, warning that their business model is likely to make controlling the pandemic more difficult, despite the rapid production of vaccines.

The report, The horrible history of Big Pharma: Why we can’t leave pharmaceutical corporations in the driving seat of the Covid-19 response, finds that 6 of the biggest corporations in the coronavirus market generated $266 billion last year, with profits totalling $46 billion. Judged by revenue, Johnson & Johnson is more wealthy than rich countries like New Zealand and Hungary. Pfizer’s revenues are bigger than oil-rich Kuwait or Malaysia.

Yet these same corporations have taken billions of dollars from governments like the UK in research and manufacturing funding, as well as presales of medicines.

While this vast mobilisation of public money has been effective in producing vaccines in record time, the Big Pharma model means that these vaccines and treatments have essentially been “privatised”. That matters, campaigners claim, because it means rich countries being prioritised in terms of distribution, and it leaves governments with no leverage over the pricing of these drugs, making it harder to control coronavirus.

The report examines the history of some of the corporations producing these medicines:

• Pfizer and its UK distributor hiked the price of on anti-epilepsy drug which 48,000 NHS patients relied upon. As a result, NHS annual expenditure on their capsules rose from about £2 million to £50 million in a year. UK wholesalers and pharmacies faced price hikes of 2,300% – 2,600%.
• GlaxoSmithKlein was handed a $3 billion fine after it admitted to giving kickbacks to doctors in the US and encouraging the prescription of unsuitable antidepressants to children. Doctors and their spouses were flown to five-star resorts, given $750, and access to snorkelling, golf and deep-sea fishing.
• Gilead introduced a Hepatitis C drug to the US market at $84,000 per course. A US Senate investigation concluded: “it was always Gilead’s plan to max out revenue, and that accessibility and affordability were pretty much an afterthought.” Gilead corporate profits increased fivefold to $21.7 billion after the release of this and another very highly priced Hep-C drug.
• Pfizer and GSK produce a vitally important pneumonia vaccine, which health NGO MSF claim has earned the companies over $50 billion while 55 million children are unable to access to the pneumonia vaccine, largely due to high prices.

Campaigners claim these examples are inherent in a model driven by the need for very high returns, and that these trends are already at play during the pandemic:

• Pfizer has made no promise to limit profits, and has pre-sold over 1 billion doses to rich governments, representing just 14% of the world’s population.
• Moderna’s corporate executive have made tens of millions of dollars this year in automated share sales which former US regulators have called “highly problematic” and worthy of investigation. Moderna’s vaccine has been made with public money, yet the company is expected to charge between $64 and $74 per person for immunisation.
• Gilead made an extraordinary application for ‘orphan status’ on its drug remdesivir, which would have given it special protection owing to the fact the drug would be useful to a tiny number of patients – the very opposite of a pandemic. A public outcry led to withdrawal of the request.
• The vaccine being developed by Oxford University was to be produced on a nonexclusive, royalty-free basis. However, on entering a deal with AstraZeneca, the situation changed. The deal is now exclusive and while the company maintains it will not profit during the pandemic, it has failed to release details of its contract and how it calculates research costs.

Nick Dearden, director of Global Justice Now, said:

“What’s been achieved during this pandemic by dedicated scientists and researchers is incredible. It’s amazing that they’ve discovered these potential vaccines in just under a year. That’s thanks to unprecedented amounts of government money poured into research. But given the public has paid for most of this research, any vaccines that come out should be owned by the public – true people’s vaccines. That would mean we could get vaccines out to those who need them in a fair way, prioritising the most vulnerable wherever they live.

“It’s beyond disgusting that a group of wealthy corporate executives and hedge funds are using this opportunity to further enrich themselves. Sadly, coronavirus has shown, once again, that the way we research and develop new medicines is not fit for purpose. We have a bunch of companies more interested in raking in massive profits than they are in providing for the needs of people around the UK and around the world. We must change that.”

The report can be downloaded here.

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The contradictory claims from Secretary of State Pompeo and President Trump blaming Russia and China respectively for carrying out what’s been described by many as one of the most intrusive cyber espionage operations against America in history are confusing for most observers but can be better understood if they accept that Pompeo might have some ulterior political motives for pushing his version of events.

As the second decade of the 21st century comes to an end, democracy and free speech no longer exist in the Western World.  In all its respects, Western civilization no longer exists.

In the United States, which poses as the model for democracy, a presidential election has just been stolen in full view of everyone.  There is expert testimony by qualified experts about how the voting machines and software were used to bias the vote count for Biden.  There are hundreds of signed affidvits of eyewitnesses who saw the fraudulent use of mail-in ballots to boost Biden’s vote count.  We know for facts that dead people were voted, illegal aliens were voted, out of state residents were voted, and some precincts had more votes cast than there are registered voters and even residents in the precincts.

Despite the abundance of evidence, except for members of state legislatures in some of the swing states, no one is acquainted with the evidence.  The presstitutes speak with one voice and deny that any evidence exists.  So do the Democrat election officials in the Democrat-controlled counties in the swing states where the presidential election was stolen.  The courts have refused to even look at the evidence.  The presstitutes misrepresent the courts’ refusals to examine the evidence as the judiciary’s ruling against the validity of the evidence despite the fact that no court has looked at the evidence.

The level of hostility of Biden supporters toward those who protest the electoral fraud is extraordinary.  Biden supporters threaten Trump supporters with loss of employment and with arrest and prosecution.  Tucker Carlson on Fox News reviews the extraordinary situation here:

Radicalized African Americans, unaware that they are being used by the Establishment, see the stolen election as their chance to rule and to displace white people.  That the winner is the Establishment is beyond their grasp.

It is obvious that if the evidence of election theft were bogus, the media would seize the opportunity to discredit President Trump and his supporters’ claims of electoral fraud by investigating the evidence for that purpose.

The Supreme Court knows that that the evidence is real. Being an Establishment institution, the Court does not want to damage America’s reputation by ruling that the election was stolen. Moreover, the Supreme Court Justices know that the American Establishment and its presstitutes would not accept a decision that the election was stolen.  The Supreme Court understands that the Establishment intends to rid government of a non-establishment president who is hostile to the Establishment’s agendas, which include globalism, destruction of the American middle class, war, more profit and power for the ruling class, and fewer civil liberties for the governed class.

The American Establishment includes the Republican Party.  In order to protect its agendas—war and US hegemony, the concentration of income and wealth, the elimination of the middle class which gave stability to the country and limited the ability of the Establishment to exercise complete control, and the overthrow of the First Amendment and our other civil liberties which limited the Establishment’s ability to control all explanations—the Establishment is willing to pay the price of the destruction of public confidence in American institutions.  The Establishment assumes that it can use the ensuing conflict to its advantage. The country will be further split apart and less able to unite against the Establishment’s self-serving agendas.

Conservatives blame the presstitutes for the Russiagate hoax that for three years kept Trump from his agenda and the subsequent attempt to impeach Trump over false charges that he bribed the Ukrainian president.  In actual fact, these efforts to destroy an elected president of the United States were orchestrated by the CIA and FBI.  It was CIA director John Brennan who alleged Trump was a traitor in league with the Russians, and it was FBI director James Comey who contrived false indictments and false prosecutions of General Flynn, Michael Cohn, Paul Manafort and Roger Stone hoping to extract in exchange for leniency false testimony against Trump. It is difficult for patriotic conservatives to get their mind around the fact that the CIA and FBI, which they think protect Americans against Russian and Chinese communists and Muslim terrorists, are in fact internal enemies of the people of the United States.

Except for a few Internet websites unknown to the majority of the people in the Western world, the only information people in the West receive is controlled explanations that serve the agendas of the Establishment.  Consider Covid, for example.  All experts who are critical of lockdowns, mask mandates, the suppression of effective treatments and the focus on vaccines, and who are skeptical of the seriousness of the pandemic are censored by the print and TV media and by Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube.  As far as I can tell, there are more real experts—and by experts I do not mean doctors and nurses brainwashed in their training by Big Pharma—who are skeptical of the agenda of public health authorities than experts who support lockdowns and vaccines.

The presstitutes serving Fauci portray the dissenting experts’ views as “conspiracy theory.”  But clearly Dr. Kamran Abbasi, executive editor of the British Medical Journal and editor of the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, is not a conspiracy theorist.  As I recently reported, he has this to say:

“Science is being suppressed for political and financial gain. Covid-19 has unleashed state corruption on a grand scale, and it is harmful to public health. Politicians and industry are responsible for this opportunistic embezzlement. So too are scientists and health experts. The pandemic has revealed how the medical-political complex can be manipulated in an emergency—a time when it is even more important to safeguard science.

“The UK’s pandemic response relies too heavily on scientists and other government appointees with worrying competing interests, including shareholdings in companies that manufacture covid-19 diagnostic tests, treatments, and vaccines. Government appointees are able to ignore or cherry pick science—another form of misuse—and indulge in anti-competitive practices that favour their own products and those of friends and associates.”  See this

Yet in place of such expert informed opinion, Western peoples only hear the ignorant propaganda from the bought-and-paid for whores on CNN, NPR, MSNBC, New York Times, Washington Post, and the rest of the paid liars.

There can be no democracy, no accountability, when people only have controlled explanations that serve the ruling agendas.

The disrespect for free inquiry, the only known basis for the discovery of truth, is so powerful today throughout the Western world that even in the West’s most famous universities—Oxford and Cambridge—censorship is entrenched.  Any student, especially a privileged “person of color” can brand any scientific fact, any historical fact, any expressed view or opinion to be “offensive.”

Those found to be the most offensive are white people whose statues and memorials are being taken down at both Oxford and Cambridge.  The founder of the famous Oxford University Rhodes Scholarships himself has been erased.  Cambridge University’s white academics and administrators have accepted a person of color as their political commissar to control their lectures, choice of words, and reading lists in order to ensure that no truth can emerge that might be declared by some ignorant student “offensive.”  Of course, white students cannot complain that it is offensive to denigrate the white creators of British accomplishments as racists. The use of political commissars to control what can be spoken was the way Stalin controlled Russia. This Stalinist practice has now been institutionalized throughout the Western world in schools, universities, media, corporations, and government.

Oxford University, in an act of contrition, has proudly announced that admission to Oxford will no longer be based on the outmoded and racist concept of merit.  Oxford University declared that the university is reserving 25 percent of its annual admissions to those unqualified to be at Oxford.

How are those unqualified to be at Oxford to succeed in graduating?  According to Oxford, before they begin on their degree studies they will be given up to two years in remedial preparation so that they become qualified to attempt receiving a degree. In other words, they will be coached through the process. Such an act of contrition cannot possibly be permitted to fail.

In other words, Oxford has abandoned merit and is discriminating against those students who displayed merit (and their parents who fostered merit) in favor of those who did not. Twenty-five percent of those qualified to be at Oxford will not be permitted to be there in order that those not qualified to be there can be. This is what “affirmative action” amounts to.

Cambridge has abandoned academic freedom and subjected the knowledge of its distinguished faculty to censorship in subservience to the idea that truth can hurt feelings and be offensive.  A university that values feelings more than truth is not a place where learning can take place.

In the event you think I am exaggerating the direness of the situation, here is an emeritus professor at the University of Kent in Canterbury explaining the factual situation.  The situation is so bad that even the professor himself is trapped in his opponents’ use of language. He refers to the truths under attack as the “dissident views.”

In the Western World the policing and censorship of thought and expression has now been institutionalized.  As the native-born white inhabitants of these countries have no right or privilege to censor the attacks on them, they are set-up for second class citizenship leading eventually to extermination.  Their civilization will proceed them in extermination.  Indeed, it is already gone. White people are people without a culture and without a country.

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Dr. Paul Craig Roberts writes on his blog site, PCR Institute for Political Economy, where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

The last few days in Syria was marked by a serious military escalation in the north of the country.

Members of pro-Turkish militant groups, supported by Turkish combat drones and artillery, launched an attack on the town of Ain Issa, controlled by the so-called Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). The SDF is a Kurdish-dominated armed group that receives financial, weapon and training support from the United States. Turkey considers the SDF to be a terrorist group due to its links with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Tensions between the SDF and Turkish-led forces in northeastern Syria are a source of the permanent instability.

The attack on Ain Issa started on December 18 and lasted until the evening of December 20, but resulted in a total failure. The only tactical success achieved by pro-Turkish forces took place in the Ain Issa countryside, where they briefly entered the villages of Mushayrifah and Jableh located in a de-facto no man’s land. Nonetheless, even these villages remained a contested area.

As of December 21, the situation in the countryside of Ain Issa remains relatively stable and no side conducts active offensive operations. So far, the only impact of the Turkish actions is the increased presence of the Syrian Army and the Russian Military Police in the area. Abandoned by its main backer in the face of another Turkish attack, the SDF is forced to continue a slow rapprochement with the Damascus government and its Russian allies.

Meanwhile, on the eastern bank of the Euphrates, ISIS cells launched several rockets at the US military facilities in the Omar oil fields. The rockets allegedly targeted US positions on the evening of December 17, when a US supply convoy was entering the area. The attack triggered a series of security operations by coalition forces along the bank of the Euphrates. Nonetheless, no details regarding their results are available.

ISIS cells are also active on the western bank of the river. According to reports, over 100 ISIS terrorists and Syrian soldiers died in clashes in the Homs-Deir Ezzor desert during the past month. Even if the numbers provided by pro-opposition sources are exaggerated, the high intensity of clashes with terrorists is being reported by the Syrian Army and its allies themselves.

Therefore, additionally to the permanent tensions in Greater Idlib, where al-Qaeda-linked terrorists still enjoy the protection of the Turkish military, the terrorist threat has once again became a visible issue in eastern Syria.

Congress just voted billions of dollars of U.S. tax money to Israel, No mainstream US media appear to have told Americans that both houses of Congress just voted massive aid to Israel, a tiny country with a long record of human rights abuses, violations of law, systemic racism, and damage to Americans.

This works out to over $7,000 per minute. The legislation passed both houses in such large numbers that Congress can likely override any potential presidential veto. This, despite the fact that George Washington warned that a ‘passionate attachment’ to a foreign country produces ‘a variety of evils…’

Press release from AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee)

“AIPAC commends the U.S. Congress for including significant pro-Israel provisions in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year (FY) 2021. These critical provisions will help Israel protect itself against continuing security threats.

[IPN Editor’s note: Israel has one of the most powerful militaries in the world and is the only country in the Middle East with nuclear weapons, which US officials are banned from mentioning.]

“Importantly, the measure includes the United States-Israel Security Assistance Authorization Act of 2020 (S. 3176). This legislation authorizes $3.3 billion in annual U.S. security assistance to Israel through FY 2028, as called for in the 2016 U.S.-Israel Memorandum of Understanding on security assistance. The legislation also includes key initiatives to galvanize U.S.-Israel cooperation in a variety of military and civilian spheres (major provisions detailed below).

“Beyond the elements of the U.S.-IsraelSecurity Assistance Authorization Act, the bipartisan defense measure authorizes $500 million in FY 2021 for U.S.-Israel missile defense cooperation with explicit sums for both R&D and procurement for the Iron Dome, David’s Sling and Arrow missile defense systems.

“The bill also authorizes the Secretary of Defense to establish a U.S.-Israel Operations-Technology Working Group within the Defense Acquisition Advisory Group to focus on early R&D in key battlefield technology.

“The bill also encourages further U.S.-Israel cooperation in diagnosing and treating victims of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

“In adopting these pro-Israel provisions, AIPAC appreciates the leadership of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Jim Inhofe (R-OK) and Ranking Member Jack Reed (D-RI), Sens. Marco Rubio (R-FL), Chris Coons (D-DE), James Risch (R-ID), Bob Menendez (D-NJ), Ted Cruz (R-TX), Tom Cotton (R-AR) and Gary Peters (D-MI), and House Armed Services Committee Chairman Adam Smith (D-WA) and Ranking Member Mac Thornberry (R-TX), and Reps. Eliot Engel (D-NY), Michael McCaul (R-TX), Ted Deutch (D-FL), Joe Wilson (R-SC), Michael Waltz (R-FL), Frank Pallone (D-NJ), Elaine Luria (D-VA), Lee Zeldin (R-NY) and Chrissy Houlahan (D-PA).

“Major provisions of the U.S.-Israel Security Assistance Authorization Act include:

• Authorizing $3.3 billion in annual U.S. security assistance to Israel through FY 2028, as called for in the 2016 U.S.-Israel Memorandum of Understanding on security assistance.
• Extending authorization for the U.S. War Reserve Stockpile in Israel through FY 2025 and authorizing an additional $200 million annually in stocks.
• Lifting current limitations on the transfer of precision-guided munitions (PGMs) to Israel in an emergency and authorizing the President to exceed the current limitation of $200 million on the transfer of PGMs in a non-emergency setting under certain conditions.
• Authorizing the Secretary of Defense, following study, to establish a directed energy program with Israel.
• Authorizing a total of $14 million for U.S.-Israel cooperation in energy, water, agriculture, cyber and alternative fuel technologies.
• Authorizing $6 million over the next three years to finance cooperative projects among the United States, Israel and developing countries.
• Authorizing $12 million over the next three years for an initiative to enhance partnerships between U.S. and Israeli companies to develop innovative medical projects primarily aimed at detecting, treating and curing COVID.”

Read complete article here

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Professor Leo Panitch was an equal-parts brilliant and generous public thinker who worked toward the betterment of humanity, his friends and colleagues say.

“If you watched Leo, you were immediately struck by his confidence,” said lifelong friend Sam Gindin. “. . . He was committed to (living) life as if it was possible for humans to build a better life.”

Panitch died Saturday of COVID-19 and pneumonia shortly following a cancer diagnosis. He was 75.

Panitch was born in 1945 to a working class family in Winnipeg. His father, a Jewish immigrant from Ukraine, worked as a garment cutter. The setting of his youth might have paved the way to his future philosophy, said friend Rick Salutin, an occasional Star columnist.

“He became a consummate academic and intellectual, but he wanted to put that at the service of the socialist movement and especially in the Marxist tradition,” Salutin said.

What struck Salutin over their years of friendship was Panitch’s “immense generosity.”

“He was always calling people, writing them and saying ‘That’s a wonderful thing you did,’ ” he said. “And that isn’t necessarily so with people who are somewhat famous, especially in academics, which can be a pretty cutthroat business.”

Panitch would go on to earn a bachelor’s degree in economics and political science from the University of Manitoba.

A pair of gunshot deaths that counted among COVID fatalities have earned the ire of a county coroner in Colorado.

Grand County, in the sparsely-populated (but breathtaking) northwestern quarter of the state, is home to fewer than 15,000 people and has been lucky enough to endure only a handful of deaths related to the Wuhan Virus.

But of those five deaths, County Coroner Brenda Bock says two actually died of gunshot wounds.

Bock sounded furious in her interview with CBS4 News in Denver, and with good reason. Grand County’s economy is heavily reliant on tourism, and as Bock told CBS4, “It’s absurd that they would even put that on there.”

“Would you want to go to a county that has really high death numbers?” she asked, presumably rhetorically. “Would you want to go visit that county because they are contagious? You know I might get it, and I could die if all of a sudden one county has a high death count. We don’t have it, and we don’t need those numbers inflated.”

Bock told CBS4 that because the victims had tested positive for COVID-19 within 30 days of having been shot, the county classified them as “deaths among cases.”

That’s a curious definition, but one required by the national reporting rules created by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“Deaths among COVID-19 cases” includes people who died with COVID-19, “but COVID-19 may not have been the cause of death listed on the death certificate.” That’s different from the CDC’s definition of “deaths due to COVID-19.” Those are cases “where COVID-19 is listed as the cause of death or a significant condition contributing to death.”

Let’s put a different spin on those rules and see if we can’t gain a little clarity.

Consider a hypothetical in which your friendly neighborhood VodkaPundit were to get hit by a car while stumbling home from his favorite drinking establishment (heaven forbid!). During my autopsy, it was discovered that I had a small tumor on my liver — because where else would I be likely to get one?

If the CDC were fighting cancer the way it’s fighting the Wuhan Virus, my death would be counted “among” those who died of liver cancer, even though the tumor was small and not yet threatening. Never you mind that what actually killed me was a ’97 Olds Cutlass with that ugly plastic body cladding.

What a terrible way to go, right?

If I’d dodged the Cutlass and gone on to die many years later of liver cancer, my cause of death would be listed as “due” to liver cancer.

The latter is good if you’re trying to keep accurate records. The former is better if you’re trying to keep the public scared and confused about the risk of liver cancer in young people.

But worse than scaring a few tourists away from the lovely Grand Lake Lodge, COVID scaremongering is being used to shutter entire states.

As the official Wuhan Flu death tally rapidly approaches 300,000, we need to pay closer attention to these reporting rules.

The idea that COVID mortality might be overstated — even wildly overstated — is hardly far-fetched. PJ Media’s own Stacey Lennox reported on Wednesday:

One would think in light of these dire predictions and given the horrible toll the response has taken on the economy and young people, the excess deaths due to COVID-19 would be through the roof. But federal data says that does not appear to be the case.

Overall U.S. deaths in 2020 appear to be in line with previous years, according to the CDC’s own data.

Given that people who died “due” to COVID are overwhelmingly either elderly, suffering from an average of 2.6 comorbidities, or both, it isn’t a stretch to conclude that 2020 was the year most were going to die of something.

That’s perhaps a morbid truth, but morbid truths are still truths.

I don’t mean to imply that there’s nothing tragic about this pandemic.

Businesses have shuttered, tens of thousands of them permanently. Educations have been disrupted, jobs lost, and various state governors engaging in acts of tyranny that in saner times would have them driven from office — or worse. My 14-year-old son kind-of/sort-of started his freshman year this autumn but confided in his mom a couple of weeks ago, “I’ve been in high school for weeks and I haven’t made a single new friend.”

That last item is about the least-damning thing you’ll read about what this shutdown year has done to schoolkids.

And when someone dies of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, taking his own life out of COVID-shutdown despair, the CDC doesn’t list that as even “among” COVID deaths.

The Wuhan pandemic has certainly been “among” the causes of many tragedies, but for the most part, our suffering has been self-inflicted.

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The Syrian crisis which began in 2011 has left many wondering what it was really about.  Most western news observers may be confused, disinterested, or have bought-in to the lies they were told by the media. However, there is an American woman who has become an expert on the Syrian crisis by being an eye-witness to the events on the ground: up close, and personal. Steven Sahiounie, of MidEastDiscourse, interviewed Janice Kortcamp to expose the truth about Syria, and hear her story first-hand.

Janice Kortkamp is an American who became an independent, self-funded observer of the Syrian crisis, in response to western media distortion. She has visited Syria seven times since 2016, while researching the crisis, and has spent months traveling to all the major cities, and most of the countryside. She also visited Syrians living in Germany, Lebanon, and Kuwait. Through an extensive network of contacts in Syria, she tracks the events on an hourly basis.

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Steven Sahiounie (SS):  While most Americans don’t know where Syria is on a map, you have been to Syria many times during the conflict. What made you become an American activist for Syria?

Janice Kortkamp (JK):  Back in late 2012, I became curious about the “Arab Spring” and started researching the events connected with it. The conflict in Syria was at the forefront of the media and so I turned my focus to it. I watched an interview on RT with President Assad and his responses and demeanor impressed me, making me curious about the country itself – not only the crisis; until that moment I was like all the other Americans with no knowledge of Syria whatsoever. (It’s important to note that while I’ve had an interest in history and archaeology all my life and studied those subjects in college, never did I learn about Syria despite its significance and contributions to civilization. Americans, in general, are typically ignorant of the world, except those who travel extensively, but there has been a kind of blackout regarding Syria, even in academia, for decades.)

The more I learned about Syria’s culture, traditions, history, people groups, industries, arts, cuisine, etc., the more fascinated and obsessed I became, spending virtually all day, every day learning new things while also tracking the military and political situation.

But it was meeting Syrians, online at first then getting to know them face to face during my seven trips there, that has been the most astonishing experience. So many people have reached out in friendship with beyond-gracious hospitality despite going through personal pain and suffering during the crisis – it is a humbling thing to receive hospitality from such survivors – they’ve taught me and shown me by their example how to be a better human being.

They’ve been open, honest, and direct, sharing their love of their country, families, villages, towns, and cities while also sharing about their problems and frustrations. It’s like they’ve refused to allow me to only view their homeland through “rose-colored glasses” (they all know how much I love Syria). It is another reason I admire them. Usually on every trip, even when meeting with high-level officials, I’ve been asked, “If you see something good, talk about it. If you see something bad say that too. But please just tell the truth of what you see.”

It is impossible to have received the gift of such great friendship and trust without reciprocating by championing their cause and far more importantly, sharing their voices.

SS:  In your opinion has the American foreign policy on Syria been fair?

JK:  No, not fair in any way, shape, or form – in fact malignant, reckless, and unjustifiable, also in opposition to the true interests of the American people as well as Syrians. The US has been antagonistic usually towards Syria since the 1940s, primarily because America pandered to Israel and the pro-Israel lobby as well as Cold War hostilities.

After 9/11, when Zionist neocons took full control over US foreign policy, that hostility became open aggression. We know how the US was actively working on destabilizing Syria and undermining the government between 2006 until the violence erupted in 2011 because of such evidence as to the leaked 2006 report from the Charge d’affaires of the US embassy in Damascus, and the 2007 meeting at the White House between GW Bush and Elliot Abrams with Syrian ex-pat leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood reported on at the time by the Wall Street Journal – very similar to the current efforts against Venezuela. Those are just two of many examples. The UK and France were heavily involved in planning and implementation.

There was a multi-pronged effort on the part of the US, UK, France, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Qatar to take control over Syria, and when that failed, to divide and conquer it. This effort, begun during the GW Bush administration and flaring into violence during Obama’s administration, continues under Donald Trump. A mass misinformation/propaganda campaign has accompanied the other attacks against Syria’s sovereignty including:

1) Economic warfare in the form of sanctions to isolate Syria and the Syrian people from the global economy which contributes catastrophically to wartime inflation, internal corruption, smuggling, and the black market as well as prohibiting investment for rebuilding infrastructure and economic recovery. Also harsh sanctions against all countries helping Syria.

2) Arming, funding, training, and supporting of proxy armies which typically shared the same basic ideology and committed the same kinds of atrocities as ISIS and al Qaeda and were often directly affiliated with the two.

3) Openly promoting outside “opposition” as the “only legitimate voices of Syrians” while completely overlooking the voices of Syrians within the country. The West’s picks for Syria’s “future leaders” included the likes of Muslim Brotherhood sheiks and one guy known for being the owner/operator of two brothels in Damascus.

4) Multiple “chemical weapons” false flags, perpetrated by terrorist proxy groups to place blame on the Syrian government to gain misguided support from the public for the illegal regime change war.

SS:  When you have met Americans and have told your story, what is the common response?

JK:  The responses have been:

Extreme and personal insults like “You traitor!” False accusations like, “You work for Putin!” And even threats of violence and death.

“I don’t believe a word you say” as they awkwardly look away.

“Well, that’s a war for you” or “war is hell”.

“No one can understand what’s going on there. What makes you think you do?”

And thankfully sometimes, “Wow, I know we’ve been lied to – tell me more.”

Sadly most Americans are simply too concerned with their own lives to care much, especially now in 2020. Even those who know our government lies about our wars are usually not impassioned enough to take any action, whether participating in demonstrations, sharing on social media, or writing their representatives in Congress (those who have written their representatives either got no response or a copied and pasted paragraph reiterating the false narratives and government position).

SS:  If you could speak to President-elect Joe Biden what would your advice be concerning the sanctions on Syria?

JK:  If I believed Biden had integrity I would have much to say to him, however his many decades’ career record in public office and current cabinet choices offer no assurance of positive change in policy or attitude towards Syria. He’s signaled that he wants to increase US “involvement”.  But if I could have his ear and he was an honest man, I would tell him to go to Syria, meet with President Assad, walks the streets of Damascus, and listen to the people there telling him what they think of the US sanctions and aggression against their country. How most can’t afford the most basic staples, how for some families even buying bread is beyond their means now. How they feel about being isolated from the world after surviving years of war to be treated as pariahs. This is what Obama should have done but he refused the invitation in 2009 and instead went on to sponsor horrific proxy militant groups against the people of Syria and its secular, women-empowering, open and friendly society.

SS:  From all your travels to Syria, what was your most memorable experience?

JK:  That is a very difficult question as there are so many unforgettable memories from my trips there, but if I have to choose one, it must be this:

In October of 2017 I, along with three other activists who were in the country at the time, received permission to go to Deir Ezzor – just weeks after the city’s liberation from ISIS. Seeing first-hand the raw consequences of life under the rule of ISIS was extremely emotional; the people’s eyes were weary and dull, and the children had a heaviness about them even when smiling. It had become a kind of wild frontier looking place even though life was already returning like in the form of fresh vegetables and fruits being available again. I visited al Mayadeen then too and that was even more disturbing as it had been only two weeks before under the control of ISIS. Listening to the soldiers’ stories of the battles, getting a glimpse of the sacrifices that were made for those victories, was sobering and bone-chilling, making my admiration of the Syrian Arab Army and its allies all the greater and my gratitude for them all the deeper.

After four days in Deir Ezzor, we headed back to Damascus through Palmyra. There was the grand dame of ghost cities for us to wander in, still spectacular after the ravages of ISIS, though with no other tourists to admire her, she seemed lonely – majestically solemn and meditative but beautiful, softened by the golden light of sunset.

Then, upon returning to Damascus, I attended a performance of the Mari Women’s Orchestra at the splendid Opera House. To join in with the at-capacity audience representing the great diversity of Syria, watching all those lovely ladies in their evening gowns masterfully playing the epic music, was a healing balm for my soul. This, I thought, is why the cost of victories has been so painfully high. And I lifted up a silent prayer, thanking God for the precious blood of the martyrs and asking His protection for the ones still fighting.

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This article was originally published on Mideast Discourse.

Steven Sahiounie is an award-winning journalist. He is frequent contributor to Global Research

Order Mark Taliano’s Book “Voices from Syria” directly from Global Research.

Mark Taliano combines years of research with on-the-ground observations to present an informed and well-documented analysis that refutes  the mainstream media narratives on Syria. 

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Author: Mark Taliano

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The first time I encountered Adrian Ghenie’s work was nearly four years ago, and yet it seems much longer than that. I suspect that the reason for this is, at least in part, because the world appears so very different than it did in early 2017, when Recent Paintings, Ghenie’s third solo show at Pace Gallery, opened to the public. The Trump administration had only just begun, and no one could foresee how radically altered the country and indeed the world would be in just a few years. The work of this Romanian-born painter was gripping, pregnant with mystery, profoundly sensuous and stimulating – I was immediately enthralled.

The canvases of the forty-three-year old Ghenie were large, bold, saturated with color, pinks, and reds and blues; imbued with a sense of history, yet unlike anything I had seen before. His portraits were engaged in a sustained dialogue with Van Gogh and Francis Bacon, among others – but there was something new here, unafraid, uncanny. Ghenie was peeling back the surface, exposing an inside composed of more than flesh and blood, an inside that was more than just another outside. This was a painter’s painter, fashioning images which could be at once deeply unsettling and intensely beautiful.

“Rest During the Flight into Egypt” (2016), provides a case in point. This was a theme which painters had been returning to for centuries. With an immense canvas (nearly ten by eight feet), that manages to feel both epic and intimate, Ghenie brings his subject into the present day with the inclusion of anachronistic details (such as sneakers with the Nike logo); invoking the present-day refugee crisis with which Europe was contending. An ominous figure, shrouded in a pink mist, is seen in profile, its face blood red, the left eye swollen and shut. Some kind of black hood covers his head – are we to suppose this is the angel of death, stalking the young boy and girl who sit in the foreground? Or is this but another weary traveler seeking a moment’s rest in his flight from persecution and violence? Ambiguity is an indelible feature of Ghenie’s work; and in this instance it may mark the ambivalence that many Europeans (and Americans) register when confronted with the prospect of sheltering refugees fleeing from the war-torn Middle East.

The Hooligans is Ghenie’s fourth solo exhibition at Pace Gallery, comprised of nine paintings and three drawings, all produced during this last year. It is a sustained engagement with European painting, including J.M.W. Turner, the Impressionists, and post-Impressionists, particularly Van Gogh and Gaugin. Ghenie remarks in a statement about this new body of work: “When I look at the Impressionists, I have the strange feeling that I am looking at something very schizophrenic. Behind those harmless colorful landscapes there is an incredible, destructive force; camouflaged. It is an act of hooliganism.”

Adrian Ghenie, The Impressionists, 2020, oil on canvas, 86-5/8″ × 118-1/8″ (220 cm × 300 cm) © Adrian Ghenie

At first glance, Ghenie’s painting “The Impressionists” (2020) would appear to have little to do with that artistic movement, its fascination with ever-changing light, its serene landscapes, its emotionally soothing pastels, and the almost phenomenological fidelity to the artist’s experience. But then, that is precisely the point. Ghenie is asking us to rethink the meaning of the Impressionists – and for good reason. He is keenly aware that all genuine art is ultimately subversive – and the artist is, by extension, a kind of troublemaker, a “hooligan” as he puts it. Ghenie’s canvas is mostly dark, certainly not bathed in the kind of sunlight so characteristic of Monet and Sisley. It is not clear whether we are indoors or outdoors, but the presence of a security camera, and the general dearth of light seems to place us indoors, while adding a discomfiting element of surveillance. A security camera generally remains stationary, recording everything that takes place within its frame – and oddly enough this does bear some comparison to what Monet would do, painting the very same view, again and again, at different points of time in the day, recording how light transforms and almost dissolves the objects with which it comes in contact.

The Haystacks (1890-91), consisting of some twenty-five canvasses, were one of the first great series of impressionist paintings by Monet – and they are invoked by Ghenie in “The Haystack” (2020), one of the shows four large canvases. What was for Monet a sustained exploration of the transience of light – a way of capturing the real effects of the sunlight as it constantly moved and transformed the visible – becomes with Ghenie a frightening and surreal landscape, with an empty road stretching nowhere. The haystack, such as it is, has become something altogether transformed – a dark and ominous mass, which appears to be almost smoldering deep within. The violence becomes palpable when we note the bloody leg that seems to have almost sprouted from it. Camille Pissarro said of Monet’s haystacks, “These canvases breathe contentment.” Ghenie is teaching us not only how to look at his own work, but how to look at works from the past, where all too often we see merely “the surface, the skill, the prettiness.” He is saying look more closely and you will find “the energy behind this, the violence” – in a word, the hooliganism.

“Turner! Oh my God! To paint a train… when everybody was obsessed with the greatness of nature and the heroism of the past.” Ghenie’s “Mr Turner” (2020) is another highly charged painting in the series. The black top hat alone invokes the great English Romantic, J.M.W. Turner, whose paintings even today can startle us with the daring and energy of his brush. Ghenie’s unsettling canvas shares with Turner a certain sense of frenzy – but Ghenie’s painting seems to be more about dismemberment than anything else: a lower leg and chalky foot, a hand, an odd phallic-like proboscis which reappears in a number of paintings from this series. The generous use of reds and pinks add to the unnerving whiff of violence that this canvas exudes.

Adrian Ghenie, Mr Turner, 2020, oil on canvas, 78-3/4″ × 118-1/8″ (200 cm × 300 cm) © Adrian Ghenie

The Hooligans marks a decisive step in the development of this daring, provocative and utterly unique painter. The Berlin-based Ghenie chose the title of this exhibition with care, attentive to the nuances of this word: the youthful rowdiness, irreverence, and public display of very physical disruption. The painter, the artist is, for Ghenie, a kind of troublemaker; and, in this sense, an inherently subversive force in society, breaching the very same standards which his work serves to establish. Which is also to say that even where it is not explicitly political – perhaps especially when it is not overtly political – genuine painting has an irreducibly transgressive dimension.

These canvases are less tidy, more unnerving, and frenetic than the paintings I saw in 2017. But then a lot has happened in the last four years. Ghenie’s paintings do not attempt to explain the world – if anything, they make things more difficult, allowing for a world that is messier and more complex. But as Turner once remarked of Rembrandt that he could give the most mundane object a sense of mystery; Ghenie recognizes that a painter subverts our ordinary ways of looking, and in the process gives back to the world its vitality and its strangeness.

Adrian Ghenie: The Hooligans will be on view through February 27, 2021 at Pace Gallery, located at 540 West 25th Street, in New York City.

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Sam Ben-Meir is a professor of philosophy and world religions at Mercy College in New York City. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: Adrian Ghenie, The Haystack, 2020, oil on canvas, 55-1/8″ × 110-1/4″ (140 cm × 280 cm) © Adrian Ghenie

“When the song of the angels is stilled, when the star in the sky is gone, when the kings and princes are home, when the shepherds are back with their flocks, the work of Christmas begins: to find the lost, to heal the broken, to feed the hungry, to release the prisoner, to rebuild the nations, to bring peace among the people, to make music in the heart.” ― Howard Thurman

The Christmas story of a baby born in a manger is a familiar one.

The Roman Empire, a police state in its own right, had ordered that a census be conducted. Joseph and his pregnant wife Mary traveled to the little town of Bethlehem so that they could be counted. There being no room for the couple at any of the inns, they stayed in a stable (a barn), where Mary gave birth to a baby boy, Jesus. Warned that the government planned to kill the baby, Jesus’ family fled with him to Egypt until it was safe to return to their native land.

Yet what if Jesus had been born 2,000 years later?

What if, instead of being born into the Roman police state, Jesus had been born at this moment in time? What kind of reception would Jesus and his family be given? Would we recognize the Christ child’s humanity, let alone his divinity? Would we treat him any differently than he was treated by the Roman Empire? If his family were forced to flee violence in their native country and sought refuge and asylum within our borders, what sanctuary would we offer them?

A singular number of churches across the country have asked those very questions in recent years, and their conclusions were depicted with unnerving accuracy by nativity scenes in which Jesus and his family are separated, segregated and caged in individual chain-link pens, topped by barbed wire fencing.

Those nativity scenes were a pointed attempt to remind the modern world that the narrative about the birth of Jesus is one that speaks on multiple fronts to a world that has allowed the life, teachings and crucifixion of Jesus to be drowned out by partisan politics, secularism, materialism and war, all driven by a manipulative shadow government called the Deep State.

The modern-day church has largely shied away from applying Jesus’ teachings to modern problems such as war, poverty, immigration, etc., but thankfully there have been individuals throughout history who ask themselves and the world: what would Jesus do?

What would Jesus—the baby born in Bethlehem who grew into an itinerant preacher and revolutionary activist, who not only died challenging the police state of his day (namely, the Roman Empire) but spent his adult life speaking truth to power, challenging the status quo of his day, and pushing back against the abuses of the Roman Empire—do about the injustices of our  modern age?

Dietrich Bonhoeffer asked himself what Jesus would have done about the horrors perpetrated by Hitler and his assassins. The answer: Bonhoeffer was executed by Hitler for attempting to undermine the tyranny at the heart of Nazi Germany.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn asked himself what Jesus would have done about the soul-destroying gulags and labor camps of the Soviet Union. The answer: Solzhenitsyn found his voice and used it to speak out about government oppression and brutality.

Martin Luther King Jr. asked himself what Jesus would have done about America’s warmongering. The answer: declaring “my conscience leaves me no other choice,” King risked widespread condemnation when he publicly opposed the Vietnam War on moral and economic grounds.

Even now, despite the popularity of the phrase “What Would Jesus Do?” (WWJD) in Christian circles, there remains a disconnect in the modern church between the teachings of Christ and the suffering of what Jesus in Matthew 25 refers to as the “least of these.”

Yet this is not a theological gray area: Jesus was unequivocal about his views on many things, not the least of which was charity, compassion, war, tyranny and love.

After all, Jesus—the revered preacher, teacher, radical and prophet—was born into a police state not unlike the growing menace of the American police state. When he grew up, he had powerful, profound things to say, things that would change how we view people, alter government policies and change the world. “Blessed are the merciful,” “Blessed are the peacemakers,” and “Love your enemies” are just a few examples of his most profound and revolutionary teachings.

When confronted by those in authority, Jesus did not shy away from speaking truth to power. Indeed, his teachings undermined the political and religious establishment of his day. It cost him his life. He was eventually crucified as a warning to others not to challenge the powers-that-be.

Can you imagine what Jesus’ life would have been like if, instead of being born into the Roman police state, he had been born and raised in the American police state?

Consider the following if you will.

Had Jesus been born in the era of the America police state, rather than traveling to Bethlehem for a census, Jesus’ parents would have been mailed a 28-page American Community Survey, a mandatory government questionnaire documenting their habits, household inhabitants, work schedule, how many toilets are in your home, etc. The penalty for not responding to this invasive survey can go as high as $5,000.

Instead of being born in a manger, Jesus might have been born at home. Rather than wise men and shepherds bringing gifts, however, the baby’s parents might have been forced to ward off visits from state social workers intent on prosecuting them for the home birth. One couple in Washington had all three of their children removed after social services objected to the two youngest being birthed in an unassisted home delivery.

Had Jesus been born in a hospital, his blood and DNA would have been taken without his parents’ knowledge or consent and entered into a government biobank. While most states require newborn screening, a growing number are holding onto that genetic material long-term for research, analysis and purposes yet to be disclosed.

Then again, had Jesus’ parents been undocumented immigrants, they and the newborn baby might have been shuffled to a profit-driven, private prison for illegals where they first would have been separated from each other, the children detained in make-shift cages, and the parents eventually turned into cheap, forced laborers for corporations such as Starbucks, Microsoft, Walmart, and Victoria’s Secret. There’s quite a lot of money to be made from imprisoning immigrants, especially when taxpayers are footing the bill.

From the time he was old enough to attend school, Jesus would have been drilled in lessons of compliance and obedience to government authorities, while learning little about his own rights. Had he been daring enough to speak out against injustice while still in school, he might have found himself tasered or beaten by a school resource officer, or at the very least suspended under a school zero tolerance policy that punishes minor infractions as harshly as more serious offenses.

Had Jesus disappeared for a few hours let alone days as a 12-year-old, his parents would have been handcuffed, arrested and jailed for parental negligence. Parents across the country have been arrested for far less “offenses” such as allowing their children to walk to the park unaccompanied and play in their front yard alone.

Rather than disappearing from the history books from his early teenaged years to adulthood, Jesus’ movements and personal data—including his biometrics—would have been documented, tracked, monitored and filed by governmental agencies and corporations such as Google and Microsoft. Incredibly, 95 percent of school districts share their student records with outside companies that are contracted to manage data, which they then use to market products to us.

From the moment Jesus made contact with an “extremist” such as John the Baptist, he would have been flagged for surveillance because of his association with a prominent activist, peaceful or otherwise. Since 9/11, the FBI has actively carried out surveillance and intelligence-gathering operations on a broad range of activist groups, from animal rights groups to poverty relief, anti-war groups and other such “extremist” organizations.

Jesus’ anti-government views would certainly have resulted in him being labeled a domestic extremist. Law enforcement agencies are being trained to recognize signs of anti-government extremism during interactions with potential extremists who share a “belief in the approaching collapse of government and the economy.”

While traveling from community to community, Jesus might have been reported to government officials as “suspicious” under the Department of Homeland Security’s “See Something, Say Something” programs. Many states, including New York, are providing individuals with phone apps that allow them to take photos of suspicious activity and report them to their state Intelligence Center, where they are reviewed and forwarded to law-enforcement agencies.

Rather than being permitted to live as an itinerant preacher, Jesus might have found himself threatened with arrest for daring to live off the grid or sleeping outside. In fact, the number of cities that have resorted to criminalizing homelessness by enacting bans on camping, sleeping in vehicles, loitering and begging in public has doubled.

Viewed by the government as a dissident and a potential threat to its power, Jesus might have had government spies planted among his followers to monitor his activities, report on his movements, and entrap him into breaking the law. Such Judases today—called informants—often receive hefty paychecks from the government for their treachery.

Had Jesus used the internet to spread his radical message of peace and love, he might have found his blog posts infiltrated by government spies attempting to undermine his integrity, discredit him or plant incriminating information online about him. At the very least, he would have had his website hacked and his email monitored.

Had Jesus attempted to feed large crowds of people, he would have been threatened with arrest for violating various ordinances prohibiting the distribution of food without a permit. Florida officials arrested a 90-year-old man for feeding the homeless on a public beach.

Had Jesus spoken publicly about his 40 days in the desert and his conversations with the devil, he might have been labeled mentally ill and detained in a psych ward against his will for a mandatory involuntary psychiatric hold with no access to family or friends. One Virginia man was arrested, strip searched, handcuffed to a table, diagnosed as having “mental health issues,” and locked up for five days in a mental health facility against his will apparently because of his slurred speech and unsteady gait.

Without a doubt, had Jesus attempted to overturn tables in a Jewish temple and rage against the materialism of religious institutions, he would have been charged with a hate crime. Currently, 45 states and the federal government have hate crime laws on the books.

Had anyone reported Jesus to the police as being potentially dangerous, he might have found himself confronted—and killed—by police officers for whom any perceived act of non-compliance (a twitch, a question, a frown) can result in them shooting first and asking questions later.

Rather than having armed guards capture Jesus in a public place, government officials would have ordered that a SWAT team carry out a raid on Jesus and his followers, complete with flash-bang grenades and military equipment. There are upwards of 80,000 such SWAT team raids carried out every year, many on unsuspecting Americans who have no defense against such government invaders, even when such raids are done in error.

Instead of being detained by Roman guards, Jesus might have been made to “disappear” into a secret government detention center where he would have been interrogated, tortured and subjected to all manner of abuses. Chicago police have “disappeared” more than 7,000 people into a secret, off-the-books interrogation warehouse at Homan Square.

Charged with treason and labeled a domestic terrorist, Jesus might have been sentenced to a life-term in a private prison where he would have been forced to provide slave labor for corporations or put to death by way of the electric chair or a lethal mixture of drugs.

Indeed, as I show in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, given the nature of government then and now, it is painfully evident that whether Jesus had been born in our modern age or his own, he still would have died at the hands of a police state.

Thus, as we draw near to Christmas with its celebrations and gift-giving, we would do well to remember that what happened on that starry night in Bethlehem is only part of the story. That baby in the manger grew up to be a man who did not turn away from evil but instead spoke out against it, and we must do no less.

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This article was originally published on The Rutherford Institute.

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His new book Battlefield America: The War on the American People  is available at www.amazon.com. Whitehead can be contacted at [email protected].

As the 2020 year closes, Congress is about to pass a $900B Covid Relief spending bill. But make no mistake. It’s Senate leader Mitch McConnell’s proposal. And it will hardly dent the rapidly slowing US economy this 4th quarter and the increasingly forecasted coming double dip recession early next year.

The new spending shouldn’t be confused as a ‘stimulus’ bill. It won’t stimulate the economy much, if at all. A stimulus requires significant net new spending. Most of the deal is just a continuation of past spending levels, and in some notable examples it’s a reduction in spending levels. The same can be said for the companion legislation to keep the US federal government funded. That’s another $1.4 trillion. But that too is just continuation spending. Nevertheless, we hear from the mainstream media it’s a $2.3 trillion total spending package, the second largest in US history (the first largest being the past March Cares Act which the same media keeps misrepresenting as a $3 trillion package).

For the record, the $3T Cares Act amounted only to $1.4 trillion actual spending that got into the US economy. More than $1 trillion in loans initially earmarked for medium and large corporations, and 11 financial markets, never got spent by the Federal Reserve. In addition, $650 billion of the $3T was actually tax cuts for investors and businesses. That’s mostly been hoarded. The only actual spending that got into the real economy and GDP was the $500 billion for income checks and unemployment benefits for workers, plus $525 billion in loans and grants for 5 million of the 31.7 million US small businesses, plus another $100B or so to the Federal Reserve’s ‘Main St.’ lending programs and less than $100B for other Fed lending. So the much touted March Cares Act actual spending was less than half the media’s reported $3T.

It’s Mitch McConnell’s Bill

Since the passage of the Cares Act in March (with a supplement in April), McConnell has insisted a follow up package would be no more than $500 billion. That’s been his position since last June. The Pelosi-Shumer team passed a $3.2 trillion true stimulus proposal in the US House called the Heroes Act in late May. McConnell rejected it out of hand and has done so for the past six months.

Pelosi-Shumer reduced their $3.2 trillion to $2.2 trillion in August. That too was rejected by McConnell and the Trump administration, who have been engaged in a phony tactical ‘hard cop/soft cop’ negotiation since July designed to break down the Democrats’ proposals. They have finally succeeded in the $900 billion deal about to be signed. The Democrats, as they guessed, finally capitulated at the 11th hour.

Here’s why the $900B is McConnell’s proposal: It amounts to the $500 billion he insisted on since last June plus the $435 billion that Treasury Secretary, Mnuchin, clawed back from the Federal Reserve earlier this month. That’s the roughly $900 billion that McConnell has agreed to.

The $435B clawed back from the Fed was money the Democrats agreed to in the March Cares Act to be given to the Fed to loan out to medium and big corps, theoretically to companies that would invest it and expand production and hiring. It didn’t happen. Big corporations in particular didn’t want the money from the Fed and its banks. They were already flush with cash. In terms of corporate bonds alone, Fortune 500 corporations alone had raised more than $2.2 trillion—thanks to the Fed’s other policy of reducing interest rates (and bond rates) to near zero.

So the money parked with the Fed in March was never used, and Mnuchin simply took it back earlier this month, gave it to McConnell, which the latter added to his $500 billion. And there you have it. Voila! The $900B forthcoming deal.

The McConnell package

• $325 billion for small business grants ($135 billion of which was left over from March)
• $166B in $600 one time income checks (cut by half from $1200) for working families with incomes less than $100k/year
• $120B in $300/wk. unemployment benefits (for 90 days, & at half former $600/wk)
• $45B for transport (including $15B for airlines already sitting on $billions of cash)
• $13B for food stamps (despite 20% American families now officially food deprived)
• $25B for rent assistance (for one month moratorium on rent evictions for 11.4 million behind on their rents owed totaling more than $70 billion)
• The rest for schools, vaccine distribution, hospitals, and other spending

The reduction in the level of the unemployment benefits and the one time
income checks represents at least $150B to $200B a month, every month, taken out of previous levels of household spending. That’s not counting its ‘multiplier effect’. That’s a hundreds of billions of dollars of reduction in consumer spending and therefore US GDP that will hit the economy come January!

Just maintaining prior levels of spending has already resulted in a rapidly slowing US economy this fourth quarter 2020.

US Economy Sliding into Double Dip

After having collapsed quarter to quarter by -10.5% in early 2020, the economy briefly rebounded in part as the economy prematurely reopened in the third quarter 2020. That was a 7.4% rebound off the -10.5% collapse. In other words, only 2/3 of what was lost in GDP terms. But that tepid rebound (not to be confused with a sustained recovery) has relapsed seriously this current 4th quarter. Many economists’ estimates, even mainstreamers, is the US GDP will grow at best around 1.5% this quarter—i.e. down from 7.4%.

Retail sales turned slightly negative in October and then sharply fell by -1.1% for the recent month of November. It will likely turn even more negative in December. Even the much announced gains in Manufacturing and Construction—together barely 20% of the economy—are now showing signs of slowing. Indicators of industrial production and manufacturing in the Chicago area and Mid-Atlantic states are slowing sharply.

More economists are forecasting a broad economic contraction—i.e. a technical double dip recession—in the coming January-March period. That includes JP Morgan bank’s research. A condition that this writer predicted last March when the economic crisis emerged. As in all cases of Great Recessions, double dips typically occur, and sometimes triple dips. The 2020 Great Recession 2.0 today is no exception.

It is in this context of a sharply slowing US economy fourth quarter, and a growing likelihood of a second bona fide contraction in early 2021, that Congress is about to pass the $900 billion McConnell package.

It’s important to understand that it’s not at all an economic stimulus proposal. It’s the weakest of possible ‘mitigation’ bills. Mitigation is about just buying time (30-90 days) until a real stimulus can be passed. Even the Cares Act of last March was acknowledged as a mitigation measure, not a stimulus, bill by its Congressional proponents.

This McConnell $900B proposal is even less a mitigation measure. It’s more a temporary palliative at best, buying 60 days of a partial offset to a coming contraction.

Moreover, one should not assume all the $900B—or even a part of it—will actually get in to the real US economy. Apart from the reduction in unemployment benefit levels, not all of the $325B money earmarked for small business PPP will be spent soon, or even at all. Studies and research shows that the PPP program of last March did not all go to those small businesses that needed it most. And much of it was used not to retain workers and wages, as the legislation proposed in March, but went to pay down business debt or was used to increase business savings that were subsequently then stuffed into business bank accounts by those businesses that scammed and skimmed off the PPP funding.

With virtually no oversight in the case of the $525B PPP from last March’s Cares Act having occurred over the past nine months, it will be significant if even half of the $325 billion is actually spent. The same can be said for much of the $44B now allocated for the airlines and other transport businesses. And even in the case of the $82B targeted for schools and colleges. It won’t all be actually spent and therefore will provide no actual stimulus or mitigation to the real economy.

In short, out of the $900B will be 2/3 at best actually spent and entering the US economy and GDP next quarter. That’s not much of even a ‘mitigation’, given the accelerating slowdown of the US economy at year’s end 2020 now underway.

The Corporate Democrats’ Spin is In

Nevertheless, Democrat party leaders—i.e. the corporate wing of that party—are spinning the capitulation to McConnell as just the first of further coming legislation after Biden is inaugurated January 20, 2021. That’s how they’re selling it to John Q. Public.

But don’t expect much in terms of fiscal spending legislation forthcoming after January 2021. That’s especially true if McConnell remains in control of the Senate, which is more likely than not, and it’s especially the case if Republicans win at least one of the Georgia Senate run off elections on January 5, 2021. McConnell will continue to say ‘No No No’ to just about everything proposed in Congress should he retain control of the Senate.

Democrats are naïve to think that, after having agreed to $900B, that McConnell after only 45 days will agree to anything more in terms of emergency fiscal spending come February-March 2021!

In this scenario, as the US economy likely slips into a double dip recession next year Biden will be relegated to any new spending via Executive Order and other presidential actions. But his already announced policy of resurrecting bipartisanship with McConnell will ensure Biden will go slow, if go at all, in terms of governing by Executive Order. He could do a lot, but he won’t. He’ll extend the bipartisan hand to McConnell again, as had Obama for years; and again the Republican dog will bite the hand and little will change.

In summary, what we have in the pending $900B ‘relief bill’ is virtually no relief at all. Even for the next 90 days; it’s a partial relief, a palliative that barely even qualifies as a mitigation. The $900B will definitely not turn around the impetus and trajectory of a rapidly slowing US economy and the likely coming double dip recession approaching in 2021.

But what’s to worry? The stock markets are hitting records daily. Money from the Fed for investing by corporations, hedge funds, private equity firms, and other professional speculators is virtually free. More business tax cuts are being added in the pending legislation to the $650B passed last March in the Cares Act (and the $4T passed before that in 2018-19). The 651 US billionaires added $1T to their wealth in just the last eight months!

Besides, Trump’s leaving the White House…maybe! (if he doesn’t declare martial law first).

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Jack Rasmus is author of ’The Scourge of Neoliberalism: US Economic Policy from Reagan to Trump, Clarity Press, January 2020. He blogs at jackrasmus.com and hosts the weekly radio show, Alternative Visions on the Progressive Radio Network on Fridays at 2pm est. His twitter handle is @drjackrasmus.

The upcoming year should be interesting. The Establishment “Deep State” has won a major victory in the United States with the election of Joe Biden as president. What remains to be seen is whether or not there will be significant bloodletting as a consequence, revenge for the presumed misdeeds that constituted the core legacy of four years of Donald J. Trump as chief executive. Many in the Democratic Party harbor deep resentments that go back to the election of 2016, which spawned the myth that foreign interference by the Russians was responsible for the upset victory by the GOP candidate. Even at this distance, few if any Democrats are willing to admit that Hillary Clinton was a deeply flawed candidate whose condescension towards whole categories of voters ultimately inspired many “undecideds” to vote against her.

Indeed, Trump came closer to repeating his improbable victory in 2020 than anyone would have predicted and the stench of possible widespread fraud continues to hang over the result. Donald Trump entered office with a pledge to “drain the swamp,” something that he found more difficult to actually do rather than just talk about doing. The Democrats will surely now work hard to methodically eliminate all political appointees in the vast bureaucracy guilty of Trumpism.

That replacement of bureaucrats is referred to as the “spoils systems” and it is to be expected, but there is something more sinister in the works with leading Democrats and some journalists calling for heads to roll, metaphorically to be sure but with real impact on the lives of those who supported the losing side. The Washington Post’s resident Trump-hating Zionist Jennifer Rubin summed it up nicely in a tweet three days after the election, posting “Any R now promoting rejection of an election or calling to not to follow the will of voters or making baseless allegations of fraud should never serve in office, join a corporate board, find a faculty position or be accepted into ‘polite’ society. We have a list.”

And Bill Clinton’s former Labor Secretary Robert Reich has been even more explicit, tweeting a demand to create a “Truth and Reconciliation Commission.” The commission borrows the name and would be modeled on the organization set up in South Africa after the fall of the apartheid government and the establishment of majority black rule, an exercise in attempted democratization that has nevertheless failed to put an end to extremely high levels of corruption and communal violence in the country.

Reich’s objective is not limited to punishing the Trump White House’s top officials who may have promoted policies considered anathema by the incoming Democratic administration. He has also tweeted “When this nightmare is over, we need a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It would erase Trump’s lies, comfort those who have been harmed by his hatefulness, and name every official, politician, executive, and media mogul whose greed and cowardice enabled this catastrophe.” The Reich proposal would potentially mean punishing thousands of otherwise innocent individuals who had little influence over what happened during the past four years. “Enabled” covers a lot of ground, and is prone to devolve into something like a witch hunt.

One Reich supporter wrote in defense of the proposal “As long as unresolved historic injustices continue to fester in the world, there will be a demand for truth commissions” and there have been numerous comments on social media sites like Facebook insisting that “something be done” about the “deplorables” who voted for and supported Trump. Interestingly, even though the comments constitute actual threats, Facebook has not deleted them, unlike the elimination of posts that run afoul of the censors by questioning the validity of the election or challenging conventional wisdom on COVID-19.

Another commenter on twitter agreed with Reich, though complaining “But it doesn’t go far enough, clearly. Trump’s assets and those of his voters should be seized by the state through legislation and distributed to those he’s harmed as reparations. Surely that’s the only way to heal our nation. Land of the free!” And finally, still another cheerleader enthused “Robert… you’re right. And after we win… we’ll come for you all… we’re pretty much over trying to share a country with you anyway. Four years ago I thought you were people with bad ideas. I was wrong: YOU’RE BAD PEOPLE.”

To be sure, Trump invited much of the hostile response to what he represents when he held rallies where supporters called out Hillary Clinton with chants of “Lock her up!” So the anger is there on both sides and momentum is building not just to replace or ignore Trump’s associates and his supporters, but to punish them for their alleged inability to comprehend the many benefits derived from Democratic Party rule. As no mechanism actually exists to enable the new regime to punish supporters of the previous administration, unless they have actually committed a crime, one suspects the process of purging the bureaucracy and voters rolls will pretty much be improvised while Biden and Harris get settled in.

Donald Trump also does not help either himself or the cause he represents. His insults and abusive language invite hostility, having his tweets turn allies into enemies and making friends of the “revolution” that he represents wish that he would just shut up. Current media reports suggesting that he might not vacate the White House on January 20^th as he continues to be convinced that he won invite a nasty response from the Democrats. Ex-president Barack Obama has warned, possibly in jest, that Trump might need to be removed forcibly by Navy SEALS.

And, of course, violence could beget violence. If denigration of Trump supporters followed by a real purge does take place it will impact on the tens of millions of voters who still believe President Trump should have won re-election but for fraud. They are ready for a fight, and not necessarily limited to the metaphoric. As I said in the beginning, it could be an interesting year here in America.

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is https://councilforthenationalinterest.org address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected]. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is a White house photo

As we enter the final week before Christmas, my thoughts turn to Bethlehem, its struggling people, and the shocking disregard for them displayed by many Christians in the West.

In the story that’s 2,000 years old, we are told of how Mary and Joseph, living under Roman occupation, were required to travel to Bethlehem to enrol in a mandatory census. Because the town had become overcrowded, they could not find housing and were forced to stay in a cave where Mary gave birth to Jesus.

The story has been romanticised in song and poetry that have come to define our understanding of that “quiet little town”, the manger where Jesus was placed, the angels, shepherds, and “wise men from the East” who came to praise the birth and bring gifts to the newborn.

Today, Bethlehem is surrounded by dozens of Israeli settlements, many built on land confiscated from Bethlehemites. It is cut off from much of the West Bank by two Israeli bypass roads and a massive concrete wall. And just this month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced plans to advance a new settlement that, when built, will completely sever Bethlehem from nearby Jerusalem.

The resultant loss of land, the growing impoverishment of its citizens, and the hostile actions of Israeli occupation forces and settlers have forced many Bethlehemites to leave their beloved city and homeland.

To most in the West, Palestinian Christians are simply invisible. To conservative Christians, they are at best a nuisance who stand in the way of their unquestioning ideological attachment to Israel.

I saw this up close during my four-year tenure as a presidential appointee to the US Commission on International Religious Freedom. As a Lebanese Maronite Catholic, who had travelled throughout the Middle East, I was aware of concerns of Christian communities in the region.

In December 2013, my third month on the commission, the staff circulated a draft opinion piece that was to be sent to newspapers.

It began:

“As we enter the Christmas season, Christians look joyously ahead to celebrating Christ’s birth in a manger. But across parts of the Middle East, the cradle of Christianity, followers of Jesus are under siege and live in fear, facing a rising tide of repression, intimidation, and violence…Unless circumstances change, some are pondering the unthinkable: Will Christianity survive in the area of its origin?”

The piece went on to devote full paragraphs to the plight of Christians in each of the following countries: Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Iran, Nigeria, and Pakistan.

I had to act quickly before a majority approved and the article would be sent out. I, therefore, wrote in response:

“How on earth can we publish an article about the plight of Christians in the Holy Land without even a mention of the concerns of the Christians in Bethlehem … and Jerusalem, etc. They too are suffering – losing their lands and ability to survive under harsh occupation. The wall, the settlement construction on confiscated Bethlehem land, and the closure of Jerusalem are choking these cities and forcing their residents to leave.”

Some of my fellow commissioners reacted with indignation. How dare I criticise Israel? Didn’t I know that Israel protects Christians and allows them to prosper? And didn’t I know that the problems facing Christians in the Holy Land are the result of Muslims?

After a number of further exchanges, they agreed to add a single disturbingly “no fault” sentence:

“In Bethlehem, birthplace of Jesus, many Palestinian Christians, who are part of a small and diminishing minority, feel marginalised and insecure.”

The next year, I invited the Catholic Patriarch of Jerusalem to address the commission. He had come to Washington seeking help on a number of issues, including stopping Israeli plans to confiscate church lands to build the barrier wall. The route for this section of the wall would separate a monastery from its vineyards and a convent and Christian children from their school. Not only did his appeal fall on deaf ears, but he and I were both shocked when two commissioners bizarrely upbraided him for not using his position to challenge Hamas!

The shocking disregard for human rights and religious freedoms is what allows Israel’s behaviour towards Palestinian Christians to continue. As a result, Bethlehem is being strangled and its people are in pain.

And this shameful silence continues. On this Christmas Day, the very conservative Christians who will sing of Bethlehem and tell the story of what happened in that city long ago will remain willfully blind to the current reality of that place and its people.

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Featured image: The wall at Bethlehem, photo by “Delayed Gratification” on Flickr

Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) has been an FDA approved drug for over 65 years. It has been on the World Health Organization’s list of essential medicines since the list began in 1977. People have been safely treated with HCQ billions of times for malaria, lupus, HIV and rheumatoid arthritis. HCQ exerts both anti-inflammatory and antiviral effects.

Nevertheless, the FDA has caused many states to ban the use of HCQ to treat COVID-19 and made it very difficult to obtain a prescription elsewhere in the U.S. by foisting studies that greatly exaggerate a potential heart rhythm problem. In contrast, the CDC website says this about HCQ:

“With frequent dosing, rarely reported adverse events include cardiac arrhythmias in those with liver or kidney dysfunction … CDC has no limits on the use of hydroxychloroquine for the prevention of malaria … It can also be safely taken by pregnant women and nursing mothers … and children of all ages.”

On Nov. 19, Dr. George Fareed from California testified before the Senate Homeland Security Committee about successfully treating over 1000 COVID patients with HCQ. On Dec. 10, Fareed responded as follows to follow-up questions from Senator Josh Hawley:

“The earlier the treatment can be started after the start of the infection, the better … Sadly, many infected people and primary care doctors and doctors in ERs follow the NIH and Dr. Fauci stipulations with no effective treatments offered. We need to have the NIH/FDA/CDC formally acknowledge the importance of early treatment with moderately acting, safe anti-virals [like HCQ] so readily available. When (if ever) that happens, everything would improve dramatically.”

At c19study.com is an up-to-date list of the countries successfully treating COVID with HCQ, mostly in combination with zinc and an anti-biotic (azithromycin or doxycycline): India, South Korea, Indonesia, China, Greece, Russia, U.A.E., Turkey and countries throughout Africa, South America and Central America.

Suppression of HCQ is a central factor in why the U.S. has among the very worst rates of illness and death from COVID-19.

For example, BBC News published an article titled “How Turkey took control of Covid-19 emergency”: “Chief doctor Nurettin Yiyit says it’s key to use hydroxychloroquine early. ‘We have no hesitation about this drug. We believe it’s effective because we get the results.’”

A study in India, where HCQ is being widely used as a prophylaxis (preventative medication), concluded that:

“The pivotal finding of our study was the noteworthy benefits of HCQ prophylaxis … [T]he National Task Force for COVID-19 in India recommended once a week maintenance dose for seven weeks …”

Harvey Risch, M.D., Ph.D., is a renowned Professor of Epidemiology at Yale School of Public Health, author of over 300 peer-reviewed publications. This is how he describes the situation:

“There’s been a massive disinformation campaign that stretches from government to the media … The evidence in favor of hydroxychloroquine benefit in high-risk patients treated early as outpatients is stronger than anything else I’ve ever studied … The F.D.A. has relied on Dr. Fauci and his N.I.H. advisory groups to make a statement saying that there is no benefit of using hydroxychloroquine in outpatients … That’s led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans who could have been saved by usage of this drug … People need to be writing or calling their congressmen and senators … [The] bureaucracy is in bed with other forces causing [it] to make decisions not based on the science …” (emphasis added)

HCQ is generic and costs a few dollars for an entire course.

As of the end May, there were over 150 million doses of HCQ in the Strategic National Stockpile (SNS). This stockpile is currently wasting away in government warehouses. On June 22, the Association of American Physicians & Surgeons (AAPS) filed suit for an injunction against the March 28 order of the FDA that prohibits the use of this stockpile except for already-hospitalized COVID patients for whom it is too late. See aapsonline.org/hcqsuit

The only drug approved by the FDA for the outpatient treatment of COVID-19 is Remdesivir, a largely ineffective medicine manufactured by pharmaceutical giant Gilead, that costs over $3000 for a course.

The immensely wealthy pharmaceutical industry which cannot profit from a cheap and available remedy like HCQ is largely responsible for its suppression through its influence upon government agencies and the media.

An illustration of how the system works is described by the editors-in-chief of the two most prestigious medical journals in the world, namely The Lancet and the New England Journal of Medicine, who cite the “criminal” pressures put on them by pharmaceutical companies, thus explaining how a series of negative HCQ studies got published. In the words of the editor of The Lancet, Dr. Richard Horton:

“If this continues, we are not going to be able to publish any more clinical research data because pharmaceutical companies are so financially powerful … Journals have devolved into information laundering operations for the pharmaceutical industry.”

“Medical journals are an extension of the marketing arm of pharmaceutical companies,” wrote Richard Smith, former editor-in-chief of the British Medical Journal (BMJ).

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The U.S. Treasury Department accused Vietnam of currency manipulation in its semi-annual report to Congress titled “Macroeconomic and Foreign Exchange Policies of Major Trading Partners of the United States.” The Council of Foreign Relations explains that “By buying foreign currency in the market, a country can artificially change the price of its imports and its exports. Countries do so to boost their own exports, especially if they otherwise have trouble generating the demand their economies need to grow.” It is claimed that this in turn leads to job losses in the U.S.

The 2015 Trade Enforcement Act required the Treasury Department to lay out specific criteria to determine if a country is a currency manipulator. Their conclusions made three points:

• a trade surplus with the U.S. of more than $20 billion;
• a current account surplus of more than 2% of the economy’s gross domestic product (GDP);
• intervention – government purchases of dollars in the foreign exchange market – of over 2% of the economy’s GDP, with purchases of foreign exchange in six of the last twelve months.

Although U.S. President Donald Trump claimed China was a currency manipulator in August 2019, the Asian country did not meet the criteria of the 2015 Trade Enforcement Act, forcing the president to use definitions from the Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988. Rather than using specific criteria, the 1988 trade act defines manipulation as an action with the purpose of “preventing effective balance of payments adjustments or of gaining unfair competitive advantage in international trade.”

The balance of trade in goods between Vietnam and the U.S. reached a surplus of $48 billion and the current payment surplus is 4.6% of GDP. The State Bank of Vietnam bought foreign currency to intervene 5.1% of GDP.

In response to this Vietnamese action, the U.S. Treasury Department accused the State Bank of Vietnam of buying foreign currency “for gaining unfair competitive advantage in international trade.” The State Bank of Vietnam denied this allegation and affirmed that the exchange rate management in recent years has been aimed at achieving consistent goals to control inflation, stabilize the macro-economy, and ensure the financial security of the country.

Under the law, the U.S. Treasury Department has a year to negotiate with so-called manipulators or else they can impose 25% tariffs on goods or impose stricter sanctions.

In addition to Vietnam and Switzerland being singled out in the report, the U.S. Treasury Department included China, Japan, South Korea, Germany, Italy, Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan, Thailand and India as countries that need to be monitored.

This list shows that Washington is trying in every way to fight its economic rivals.

There are several factors that increase the U.S. trade deficit with Vietnam, and one of the most important factors is the wave of production shifting to Vietnam from China due to Trump’s tariff war with Beijing. Ironically, Vietnam’s trade deficit is a consequence of Trump’s own policies against Beijing.

The State Bank of Vietnam bought foreign currency and will continue to do so, like many other countries, despite U.S. threats. Foreign exchange reserves were increased for the purpose of strengthening Vietnam’s economy and protect its domestic market. If we look at the fluctuation of the exchange rate between the American and Vietnamese currencies, it is observed that the rate is always fluctuating in a narrow band. Effectively this means that it is impossible for Vietnam to deliberately devalue its currency to reduce export costs to gain an “unfair competitive advantage in international trade.”

On the other hand, the U.S. itself is a currency manipulator. Washington manipulates the dollar to punish countries that it has disputes with. The U.S. immediately removed banks from the dollar-denominated payment system and imposed this measure on not only countries they want to punish, but also on everyone that is related to this country in one way or another.

The Vietnamese leadership will continue with its current economic policies and will not give in to U.S. pressure. Hanoi appreciates its good relationship with Washington, but Vietnamese leaders always prioritize national interests. None-the-less, the U.S. Treasuries accusation against Vietnam negatively impacts the bilateral relationship between Washington and Hanoi, and any decision to impose tariffs will damage relations significantly.

Although tariffs would damage relations, the Trump administration will be leaving the White House in less than a month. There is little suggestion thus far that U.S. President-Elect Joe Biden has an interest in continuing Trump’s trade war with China or punishing Vietnam because of a consequence of Trump’s own decision. Vietnam and China have a difficult history spanning centuries, and it is likely that Biden is more interested in keeping the two countries divided rather than uniting to oppose a sustained American trade war. It can be estimated that a Biden administration will quell accusations that Hanoi is engaging in currency manipulation to avoid Hanoi pivoting towards Beijing.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

The FDA is investigating allergic reactions in “multiple states.” The agency acknowledged the reactions may have been caused by PEG, a compound in the Pfizer vaccine that CHD previously told the FDA could put millions of people at risk.

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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) told reporters late Friday the agency is  investigating “about five” allergic reactions to the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine in “multiple states.”

The announcement followed Friday’s news that an Illinois hospital temporarily shut down its COVID vaccination program after four healthcare workers there experienced allergic reactions — one of which was severe — to the vaccine.

Also on Friday, CNN reported that a third healthcare worker in Alaska was hospitalized for six hours for an anaphylactic reaction to the Pfizer vaccine. The report came on the heels of last week’s news that two Alaskan healthcare workers had severe allergic reactions — including one woman who was hospitalized for at least two nights after going into anaphylactic shock.

Anaphylaxis is a severe, potentially life-threatening allergic reaction that can occur within seconds or minutes of exposure to something a person is allergic to. If not treated immediately, it can be fatal, the Mayo Clinic explains.

According to Reuters and other news reports, the director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, Dr. Peter Marks, said polyethylene glycol (PEG), a compound in the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, may have triggered the allergic reactions in the U.S.

The Pfizer and newly approved Moderna vaccines contain PEG. Both vaccines were approved by the FDA for emergency use, but are not yet licensed.

Lyn Redwood, president of Children’s Health Defense (CHD), said there shouldn’t be any mystery at this stage about whether or not PEG caused the reactions.

“It’s a simple blood test,” Redwood said. “If they’ve tested the people who had these allergic reactions for anti-PEG antibodies, then they know. If they haven’t, why haven’t they?”

FDA’s Marks on Friday also acknowledged that allergic reactions to PEG could be “somewhat more common than previously understood.”

But, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., CHD chairman and chief legal counsel, said:

“As we told the FDA in September, studies show that one in seven Americans may unknowingly be at risk of experiencing an allergic reaction to PEG.”

“At the very least, everyone should be screened for anti-PEG antibodies before getting the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines,” Kennedy said. “It is unconscionable that instead, the FDA and CDC are encouraging people to go ahead and risk a life-threatening anaphylactic reaction and just assume that someone will be on hand to save them.”

In September, before either vaccine had been approved, CHD asked the FDA to inform Moderna trial participants that the vaccine contained PEG, and to inform them of the “well-documented evidence of adverse PEG-related immune reactions, including life-threatening anaphylactic immune reactions.”

In a letter to Marks and FDA Commissioner Stephan Hahn, Kennedy also said Moderna should ask trial participants if they’d ever had an allergic reaction to any other drug containing PEG, and the company should prescreen trial participants for PEG allergies, as many people who have anti-PEG antibodies don’t know they have them.

The FDA responded by suggesting that CHD take its concerns directly to Moderna. On Saturday, after the reports of allergic reactions in Alaska and Illinois, Hahn told the Hill:

“One of the things that the FDA does very well and uniquely is really getting to the bottom of events like allergic reactions so we can completely understand the circumstances and better inform the public and also our regulatory decisions.”

Following last week’s reports of allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis, the FDA said it is “working closely” with the Centers for Disease Control (which has officially acknowledged six allergic reactions) and “colleagues” in the UK, where the first allergic reactions to the Pfizer vaccine were reported.

An initial investigation into the allergic reactions experienced by the UK healthcare workers suggested PEG may have been the culprit, according to Reuters.

UK health officials have since advised that anyone who has a history of any severe allergic reactions should not get the vaccine. The country is reportedly rolling out “resuscitation centers” equipped to respond quickly to anyone who experiences anaphylactic shock after receiving the vaccine.

In the U.S., however, the CDC says anyone who has a history of severe allergic reactions not related to vaccines or injectable medications — such as allergies to food, pet, venom, environmental or latex — may still get vaccinated but should be monitored for 30 minutes instead of the usual 15 minutes after the vaccine is administered. New CDC guidelines issued after the allergic reactions in the U.S. state:

“If you have ever had a severe allergic reaction to any ingredient in a COVID-19 vaccine, CDC recommends that you should not get that specific vaccine. If you have had a severe allergic reaction to other vaccines or injectable therapies, you should ask your doctor if you should get a COVID-19 vaccine. Your doctor will help you decide if it is safe for you to get vaccinated.”

These guidelines are inadequate, Redwood said.

“Many  people who have never previously experienced any type of allergic reaction may be at risk of a severe reaction to the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines,” Redwood said. “That’s because millions of people may have developed anti-PEG antibodies as a result of having unknowingly been exposed to PEG in the past.”

According to research published in 2018, there are more than 1,000 products on the market — including pharmaceuticals, processed foods, cosmetics and disinfectants — that contain PEG. PEG is also the main ingredient in antifreeze.

“Anyone who’s had a colonoscopy, depending on what was used for preparation for the procedure, may have anti-PEG antibodies,” Redwood said, because many of those products contain PEG.

“It’s a simple blood test,” Redwood said. “Everyone considering getting the Pfizer or Moderna COVID vaccine should ask their doctor for a blood test to rule out anti-PEG antibodies before getting the vaccine.”

Some of the healthcare workers who suffered severe allergic reactions to the Pfizer vaccine, including the woman hospitalized in Alaska, had no prior history of allergic reactions to anything, including other vaccines or pharmaceuticals.

Studies estimate that approximately 72% of the U.S. population has acquired anti-PEG antibodies. The referenced study used blood samples taken from 1990-1999 and earlier, showing a steady increase over time in the percentage of those with antibodies to PEG, making it conservative to estimate, after two decades, that the incidence is closer to 80% today.

According to a 2018 physicians survey, only 22% of respondents were aware of anti-PEG antibodies, and only 35% were aware of having been prescribed medications containing PEG.

The authors of a 2012 study on PEG antibodies concluded, “patients should be pre-screened and monitored for anti-PEG prior to and throughout a course of treatment with a PEGylated compound.”

According to news reports, documents published by Pfizer and Moderna showed that people with a history of severe allergic reactions were excluded from the clinical trials, which explains why the adverse reaction to PEG didn’t show up in the trials.

Last week Kennedy called on the co-chair of the new COVID Advisory Board to consider the long-overdue review and reform of the government’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System. Kennedy said his request is urgent in light of the push to vaccinate millions of people using vaccines approved for emergency use following abbreviated pre-approval clinical trials.

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Featured image is from CHD

It is no surprise that many prisons are built on polluted land that has been torn apart for resources, brutally mistreated, and virtually destroyed. The land is dangerous, wrought with toxins and pollutants. 

Prisons — places created to lock up and lock down the most marginalized people — are often chosen to inhabit these desolate and poisonous lands.

People who are imprisoned face atrocious environmental conditions on a daily basis, from contaminated drinking water to polluted air. In the midst of a pandemic, the living conditions for our people inside are only deteriorating. As correspondent Cecil Brookins notes, “We’re force-fed cancers, contagions, flus, and coronavirus with no tests or medical treatment.”

Prison Radio has access to the cruel and unlivable environment of prison through commentaries we record, written and spoken by people who are incarcerated, and we need your help to keep those voices on air. These commentaries, embedded with facts, research, and personal stories, are essential in the fight to expose the environmental abuse in prison administrations; by donating to our Winter Campaign now, you can make this impact. Work with us to ensure that the voices we need most are not silenced.

In Pennsylvania, State Correctional Institution (SCI) Fayette is located directly on a coal ash dump. According to the Abolitionist Law Center, 80% of the people imprisoned suffer from the toxic ash, causing a slew of health conditions, from routine headaches to respiratory illnesses. Our people inside have no choice but to sit and watch their health decline.

As correspondent Mumia Abu-Jamal commented on SCI Fayette,

“The culprit here is the wide array of chemicals…The other culprit? The PA Department of Corrections, which chose to build a prison in the midst of a toxic waste dump. In Pennsylvania, every prison sentence can be a death sentence.”

To build a prison on toxic land is extremely negligent to the lives of people who are incarcerated. Yet government officials have another priority: jobs. Since 1992, there have been five federal prisons built in central Appalachia, triggered from the downfall of coal mining, according to The National Resources Defense Council. This is a direct example of the prison industrial complex, as these prisons were not built to “fight crime,” but rather, to re-energize a dying economy.

In order to understand the state of the environmental conditions that people experience in prison, we need first-hand accounts. Our correspondents report the truth, and it is essential to amplify their voices. Donate if you are able, as correspondent Byrant Arroyo makes it clear that it is simply not an option to leave this fight in government hands.

“Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, DOC, knows it has a water crisis on its hands. The top agencies…know about this open secret, and have conspired to ignore most, if not all of prisoners’ official complaints,” Bryant Arroyo said.

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VIDEO: Ask The Experts: Covid-19 Vaccine – Now Banned on YouTube and Facebook

By Global Research News, December 21 2020

The opinions of prominent scientists who question the lockdown, the face-mask or social distancing are “taken down” by Google: “YouTube doesn’t allow content that spreads medical misinformation that contradicts the World Health Organization (WHO) or local health authorities‘

Joe Biden and the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty: A Timeline of Inaction and Disingenuous Proposals

By Shannon Bugos, December 21 2020

Upon entering office on January 20, 2021, President-elect Joe Biden will have 16 days before the last remaining treaty limiting US and Russian nuclear arsenals, the 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), expires.

Prosecution of Alleged War Crimes: Need for Afghan Voices in Australian Judicial Process

By Dr. Melinda Rankin and Dr. Jacinta OHagan, December 21 2020

The release of the Inspector-General of the Australian Defence Force’s report on the Afghanistan Inquiry (the Brereton Report) into alleged war crimes committed by Australian SAS soldiers has prompted outrage and shock.

Video: Mainstream Media vs. Real Journalism: John Pilger on the New Cold War with China, Biden’s Victory and the Coronavirus

By John Pilger, December 21 2020

He discusses the devastating impact of Covid-19 in the UK, rising poverty and militarism, the Western logic for the new Cold War with China, the victory of Joe Biden over Donald Trump and why not much will change with Trump leaving the White House, the Yemen War, the survival of Venezuela despite crippling international sanctions.

Donald Trump Administration’s Approval of “Radioactive Roads”: Lawsuit against EPA

By Center For Biological Diversity, December 21 2020

Environmental, public health and union groups sued the Environmental Protection Agency today for approving the use of radioactive phosphogypsum in roads. The groups also petitioned the agency to reconsider its Oct. 20 approval.

Today’s China Espionage Scandals Revive the Gouzenko Hoax That Unleashed the Cold War

By Matthew Ehret-Kump, December 21 2020

Today, a new coordinated psychological operation has been sprung to convince every living patriot across the Five Eyes sphere of influence that the enemy of the free world who lurks behind every conspiracy to overthrow governments, and western values is…China.

Warning: Covid Vaccines! Huge Risks, Huge Injuries – Huge Compensations?

By Peter Koenig, December 21 2020

Did you know that the US Government since 1988 paid as of 1 December 2020 more than 4.4 billion dollars to vaccine-injury victims? – It’s your money – Taxpayers Money. This is Health Services and Service Administration Vaccine Injury Compensation Data.

Covid-19: Mass Testing Is Inaccurate and Gives False Sense of Security: British Medical Journal Report

By The BMJ, December 21 2020

Mass testing of people without covid-19 symptoms is “not an accurate way of screening the general population,” a senior figure at the Department of Health and Social Care has said in a letter seen by The BMJ.

Final Weeks in Office, Donald Trump Blacklists Dozens More Chinese Firms

By Stephen Lendman, December 21 2020

During his final weeks in office, Trump and hardliners surrounding him are on a virtual scorched earth rampage against nations on the US target list for regime change — notably China and Iran.

The Covid Vaccine: The Fate of “Human Guinea Pigs” from the Lab’s “Mouse Point of View”.

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, December 21 2020

How is it that a vaccine for the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which under normal conditions would take years to develop, was promptly launched in early November 2020?

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As the year slowly draws to a close, we remain committed to providing a diverse and wide range of opinion and analysis of a World in crisis. Our sincere hope is that truth will ultimately prevail and will be used as an instrument of social, political and economic transformation. We are much indebted to our readers, to our authors and members of our team for their support and commitment.

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During his final weeks in office, Trump and hardliners surrounding him are on a virtual scorched earth rampage against nations on the US target list for regime change — notably China and Iran.

They’re going all-out to prevent incoming Biden/Harris regime hardliners from reversing escalated US war on these nations by other means.

Pompeo announced the latest assault on China.

Defying reality, he falsely claimed that Beijing “harms US interests and undermines the sovereignty of our allies and partners (sic).”

Saying the Commerce Department “add(ed) 59 PRC entities to its export-control Entity List,” he added the following Big Lie:

Blacklisted Chinese firms “undermine our national security and foreign policy interests (sic).”

In response to the above hostile action, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said the following:

“The US side claims that it champions market economy and fair competition, but its politicization of trade issues goes against its words as well as international trade rules and is detrimental to the interests of both Chinese and American companies, the normal technological exchanges and trade flows between the two countries…on a global scale, and the stability of global industrial chains, supply chains, and value chains.”

“China will continue to take necessary measures to safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese companies.”

“The US side has been smearing China and oppressing Chinese companies under the (phony) pretext of national security.”

“China firmly opposes such practice which violates market competition and international trade rules, jeopardizes global industrial and supply chains.”

Along with scores of other firms, the Trump regime blacklisted, China’s Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMIC), its leading chipmaker, was targeted.

The US Commerce Department’s so-called Entity List includes “foreign persons…businesses, research institutions, government and private organizations, individuals, and other types of legal persons — that are subject to specific license requirements for the export, reexport and/or transfer (in-country) of specified items.”

Commerce Department Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) license requirements for exporting goods and service to the US are all about blacklisting designated firms of targeted countries like China.

The policy aims to give corporate America a leg up on foreign competition, notably from China.

Blacklisted firms are prohibited from purchasing US technology without Washington’s permission.

On Friday, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said the following:

“We will not allow advanced US technology to help build the military of an increasingly belligerent adversary (sic),” adding:

“Between SMIC’s relationships of concern with the military industrial complex, China’s aggressive application of military civil fusion mandates and state-directed subsidies, SMIC perfectly illustrates the risks of China’s leverage of US technology to support its military modernization (sic).”

Whenever accusations like the above are made about China or other nations free from US control, no credible evidence accompanies them because none exists.

No nations threaten US national security. In stark contrast, imperial USA threatens everyone everywhere — at home and abroad.

SMIC, tech giant Huawei, and other Chinese firms on the US entity list are targeted for involvement in developing world-class/state-of-the-art telecommunications, semiconductor, and other high-tech products able to compete with their US counterparts globally.

On Friday, China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi slammed “unacceptable” US actions against its firms.

Since Trump took office in January 2017, his regime blacklisted over 300 Chinese entities — an act of war by other means.

It’ll likely continue in similar form against all nations on the US target list for regime change after a January 20 change of the guard in Washington.

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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. – Oscar Wilde

Today all radio stations on Planet Earth should be playing this song. What the aptly named Fifth Dimension immortalized in their spring of 1969 psychedelic soul classic is now literally true: This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius – the Grand Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn on December 21^st  at 𝟬° in Aquarius.

Aquarius starts just as some dodgy, self-important elites gear up to impose a Great Reset on most of the planet – following a very specific, reductionist and exclusionist political agenda. Yet the real deal is not the Reset; it’s the Mutation.

So we’re all into something much bigger than any neo-Orwellian scenario. To shed much needed light into what seems our current, interminable darkness, I posed selected questions to Vanessa Guazzelli, a respected astrologer, writer and speaker in astrology conferences worldwide, as well as a practicing psychoanalyst and psychologist.

Let astrology fertilize geopolitics. Let the sunshine in.

Image: The astro-cartographic map of the Great Mutation

All that is solid mutates into air

PE: Arguably not many people around the world are aware that a Jupiter-Saturn conjunction this December 21^st seems to represent the ultimate game-changer – defined by serious astrology scholars as the Great Mutation.

Could you please elaborate on what this Mutation really means, astrologically, as it seems to take place every 200 years? And bringing it back to everyday life and politics, are we permitted to infer geopolitical parallels from what the stars are telling us?   

VG: By Great Mutation we refer to when the Jupiter-Saturn conjunctions change elements, which happens every 200 years as you mentioned. Jupiter and Saturn are in conjunction, astrologically, by ecliptic longitude, every 20 years, not that long a period. However, they keep on intersecting in signs of the same element for 200 years, with the possibility of another 40 years of transition, indicating a greater cycle.

Jupiter and Saturn are what we call social planets and are to be considered in regards to politics and geopolitics. When the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction starts to effectively happen in the next element, it marks the Great Mutation, denoting important socioeconomic and cultural changes. That’s what is happening now.

Image: Vanessa Guazzelli.

We come from a two-century period of conjunctions in Earth signs. The emphasis has been on matter and the more tangible dimension of life – material boys and girls in a material world. As we now move on into the element of air, as they conjoin at 0º of Aquarius, a call for sublimation takes place.

All that is solid mutates into air. Things and procedures can be less material and more digital and, to some extent, virtual. But not only that. Shared ideas and ideals gain yet more importance. More then what we materially have, with whom and what for is what matters most. Collaboration and cooperation are, now more than ever, the winds which make the world go around.

This is indeed a highly significant astrological aspect and configuration happening on December 21, at 18h20 UTC. In parts of Asia and Oceania, it will be already past midnight, on December 22.

This is not only the Great Mutation but a Great Conjunction, when the two farthest visible planets conjoin not merely by longitude but also by latitude (ecliptic coordinates), by both right ascension and declination (equatorial coordinates). That means they are not just aligned in the same direction but really, really close to each other in the sky as seen from Earth, almost as if they were one and the same star.

Last time the two heavenly bodies have been that close was in 1623, but that was not a Great Mutation, just a regular conjunction in terms of ecliptic longitude. Astrologically, the fact that all these enhancements happen together at this time intensifies the significance of what this conjunction now indicates, how powerful a mutation it marks.

In everyday life, it also speaks of an increase in technological development, digitalization of things and procedures, including crypto-currencies and digital money as a sort of “sublimed” money, from matter to a lighter, less material “substance” which can quickly circulate through air.

At a more personal level, we tend to lose interest in social contexts which are not in tune with our ideas and ideals, and we’re pulled towards groups, associations and projects in the same wavelength as we are.  It is not a time to merely rely on institutions to take care of people, but a time to discern for oneself and then connect with others with shared interests, ideals, purposes.

The air element is where we open space and make room for the Other, be it in respect for differences or to collaborate and cooperate towards shared interests and projects. Co-op’s, where every participant gets a fair, proportional share, in a joint enterprise, is surely a way to go.

Aquarius is opposite to the centralizing sign of Leo. Geopolitically, that is to say, it is not the time for a hegemonic single star to rule the world, but a time of many stars illuminating the entire sky. It is not a time for a single empire. There can be empires, if in plural. The strength of powerful nations now lies, more than ever, in the quality of their partnerships and alliances in mutual respect, as equals.

Any power which loses sight of that crucial key will see it, in the short or long run, backfire. Some are more powerful than others and some will be more prominent than others. Nonetheless, they are not alone. It is time for a multipolar world – now that is the Mandate of Heaven.

Regarding the Great Mutation’s astro-cartographic map, which shows the lines of planetary positions on the face of the Earth, it is interesting to notice that the IC lines of Jupiter and Saturn go through Beijing, indicating the relevance of China in the foundation of this 200-year cycle, for the IC is the root of an astrological chart.

On the other side of the globe, we see the MC lines of the two planets going through South America (Venezuela, Brazilian Amazon, Bolivia, Argentina), showing the value of the continent’s resources in this new cycle.

What the Davos crew is up to

PE: Our current, turbulent juncture seems to be pointing towards increased bio-security and what some serious systemic analysis defines as techno-feudalism. All this implies hyper-concentration of power – and not only power exercised by the geopolitical hegemon, the United States. Should we now expect a serious mutation of the world-system – as studied by Immanuel Wallerstein, in the sense of serious changes to our capitalist system? 

                                                    Image: Immanuel Wallerstein. Source: Wikimedia Commons

VG: Yes, we should. We are at the very turning point of the world-system. Along with the Great Mutation, another immensely significant aspect in the 2020s is the Saturn-Neptune conjunction, in February 2026, at 0º of Aries. This is precisely the first degree of the whole Zodiac, also called the Vernal Point – crucial in astrological interpretation.

Saturn and Neptune conjoin every 36 years, which is a relatively short historical cycle. However, as with the Great Mutation, the way it occurs and where in occurs in the Zodiac can lead us to broader historical perspectives and indicate more expressive historical moments.

If we go back up to 7,000 years ago, this conjunction has occurred at the Vernal Point only in 4361 B.C. and 1742 B.C. If we look up three thousand years ahead, the closest it gets to the Vernal Point is 3º of Aries in 3172. Quite rare. So this conjunction at the first degree of the Zodiac, 0º of Aries – the very beginning – is not that small a deal.

Neptune impregnates and conceives; Saturn refers to the concrete structure of reality; and 0º of Aries means new, springing up. Saturn-Neptune on 0º Aries means a new conception of reality.

Aspects between Saturn and Neptune, by historical observation, are associated with socialism and communism – these movements on Earth coincide with the transiting contacts between these two planets in the sky. It has already been proven in mundane astrology historically. Moreover, this does not just tell us about the past, for it is in fact just about to begin – upgrading and advancing, reconfiguring itself in yet new forms of socialism.

According to Wallerstein, during the structural crisis which characterizes the final period of a world-system, a bifurcation of the system can tilt to one of either directions, or to multiple systems. Before passing away last year, he did consider us to be right in the middle of the structural crisis of capitalism, which lasts 60 to 80 years.

I’d say at this moment we are past the mid-point. It could, initially, go towards multiple systems in two branches: on the one hand, the freshness of the Eastern winds inspiring socialism and multipolarity through the Belt and Road Initiative and the integration of Eurasia and its partners; on the other hand, the whirlwind of the collapsing empire and its Western allies as a terminator cyborg operated by the perverse 0.0001% who are so lifeless they cannot conceive other people’s right to exist.

When I first heard about it in June 2020, it astonished me how they set the “Great Reset” for January 2021, so close to the Great Mutation at the end of December 2020. I doubt this is a mere coincidence or “synchronicity.” J P Morgan is known to have affirmed that millionaires don’t need astrologers, but billionaires do.

Possibly aware of this great transition, the Davos crew seem to be actually trying to reset the system they already rule with their own settings and revive the dying system as a cyborg from hell.

Image: ‘Wall Street Bubbles – always the same,’ 1901 cartoon by Keppler, depicts J.P. Morgan as a bull blowing soap bubbles for eager investors. Source: Wikimedia Commons

The nefarious potential of the Aquarian emphasis is the control of society through technology, be it techno-feudalism or, gods forbid, techno-slavery. On the brighter side of the Force, Aquarius is about a social project to sustain life and meet the needs of the people. Both dimensions or systems might co-exist on Earth for a while.

Western powers – not to mention the Masters of the Universe, as you say, who pull their strings – seem to have a long way to go before reaching a state of real and respectful cooperation. Perhaps more ancient civilizations found in the East have a deeper, more consistent root from which to draw the wisdom and maturity necessary in such challenging times for humanity.

Often remembered for the food and goods traded along the route, the Silk Roads involved in the past and involve nowadays the exchange of ideas. It is interesting to observe the strong Aquarian edge activated in China’s astrological progressions when the Belt and Road Initiative was first proposed by Xi Jinping in Astana, in 2013, and how it connected to the degree of the Great Mutation (progressed Venus and Jupiter conjunct AC at 1º Aquarius).

When some years before that Vladimir Putin gave his historical speech in Munich, proposing the Eurasian Integration, in February 2007, there was a Saturn-Neptune aspect – an opposition. When at the 70th UN Assembly, both Putin and Xi delivered long, strong and synchronized speeches affirming the multipolarity of the world, in 2015, there was also a Saturn-Neptune aspect – a square.

The next Saturn-Neptune aspect will be the conjunction, in February 2026, inaugurating a brand new cycle and we can expect it to be related to these previous movements, keeping in mind the cycle points towards multipolarity and new forms of socialism.

The Black Moon spell

PE: Could Covid-19, on a certain level, be interpreted as the – unpleasant – preamble towards a Great Mutation? After all the new social (un)reality represents a system upside down: near-total economic devastation, especially of small businesses; canceling of constitutional rights; governments practically ruling by decree, with no popular consultation; global corporations censoring any manner of informed dissent; whole societies practically under house arrest; most of the planet reduced to a sort of totalitarian theme park.

VG: Oh, Covid-19 – we could have a whole conversation just on the implications of it at so many dimensions, and how it can be, to some extent, astrologically tracked. It definitely can be interpreted as the unpleasant preamble, perhaps aiming to the Great Reset, one could ponder.

An unprecedented worldwide collective experience – and experiment. Nevertheless, serving to shake it all up, transforming our very perception of time, preparing for the conception of a new time. To all those paying attention, a call to be yet more alive, more vivid, against all odds.

The very dichotomy which has been so emphasized between “either caring for life or caring for the economy” in and of itself shows how absurd a world it already was. How many people so easily got caught into separating one thing from the other, as if it was a means to resist the system and finally say no to the demands of capital accumulation. To eventually see, indeed, small businesses devastated, poverty increasing drastically, whilst billionaires concentrate wealth to yet more bizarre levels.

Something fundamental to consider is how it has affected the human body.  The pandemic was declared with Black Moon (the lunar apogee) in Aries and that indicates the importance of being sharply present and responsive as Michael Jackson danced, Bruce Lee moved and Maria Zakharova responds.

In October, Black Moon, this astrological point representing the visceral and instinctive dimension of existence, moved into Taurus, highlighting the importance of being aware of how the life force in us is conditioned or channeled, shaping how we perceive our own existence. For instance, how the confinement of the body might – or might not – confine our psyche.

What are the psychological effects of the lack of touch or the physical experience of constantly having our mouths covered? How those situations affect our psyche is not irrelevant. Both René Descartes and Wilhelm Reich had Black Moon in Taurus. How are mind and body related? Are they a cartesian dichotomy or are they intertwined as bio-energetic unity moved by libido?

This is an important underlying issue in our collective until July 2021.

The fate of the American empire

PE: Astrology in History is full of fascinating stories about celestial interpretations opening the way to a crucial political or military move. For instance, right before the Mongol conquest of Baghdad in 1258, the Great Khan, Hulegu, asked the court astrologer about the prospects ahead. The astrologer, Husam al-Din, said that if he followed his generals and invaded Baghdad, the consequences would be ominous.

But then Hulegu turned to a Shi’a astronomer, Tusi, a polymath. Tusi said the invasion would be a major success. That’s what happened – and Tusi was admitted into Hulegu’s inner circle. So the Mongols – who built the largest empire in history – were big fans of “celestial insurance.” Could “celestial insurance” in our times end up predicting the fate of another empire – the US?

VG: That’s true, there are so many fascinating stories. The end of the Byzantine Empire and conquest of Constantinople by Sultan Mehmet II of the Ottoman Empire was also marked by an astrological prediction of the Ottoman victory related to an eclipse.

The US Pluto return happens in 2022. That’s massive. It’s a cycle of approximately 247 years. Pluto has a sense of fate to it. The return of the lord of the underworld also speaks of the return of that which was repressed, hidden or rejected. It will have three exact hits throughout 2022, and the final and definitive of the next Pluto cycle has the planet of death and regeneration facing Black Moon Lilith in Cancer, in opposition. Karma is a bitch and hits home.

It is also a cycle related to power and power status. It won’t all be bad and some victorious moments will be there, but there is a change in the country’s position in the balance of powers in the world which is not so easy to digest. The power struggle will be intense, both externally and internally, with considerable risks of destructive manifestations. The best way to go through such a moment would be to purge – although it’s hard to believe “the swamp” can be so easily drained.

It is a call for a deep transformation, when all things under the rug and corpses out of the basement are to be dealt with. For the nation’s people it is a call for maturity (Saturn conjoins Moon), compassion and a more humanly receptive disposition (Neptune opposition), letting illusions dissolve and realizing the empire is losing its hegemony and status, but the nation will continue. What nation should it be for its people – as opposed to against other peoples?

This doesn’t mean the American Empire will fall by 2022, but it is collapsing and will undergo dramatic transformations in the coming decade.

A Dystopian Renaissance

PE: Amid so much gloom, looks like you are introducing a very hopeful concept: “Dystopian Renaissance”. That’s the exact opposite of what is being largely interpreted as our inevitable neo-Orwellian future. How would you characterize this Dystopian Renaissance – in terms of individual, collective, political and cultural struggle?

VG: The concept emerges precisely to elucidate the extreme complexity of our times. Well, the renaissance part seems very hopeful, doesn’t it? But, there’s the dystopian part to it too. It is not a utopian renaissance, as we well know. Perhaps in 200 years, when we reach the Great Mutation into water, the same element as the magnificent Italian Renaissance, humanity might be able to feel and better comprehend deeper dimensions of life. Why not aim for Utopia next? But whatsoever may be possible by then passes through right now.

It is now that, along with this special Great Mutation, a few significant astrological aspects point to a real change of the world-system. It takes this crucial moment in time and this period of air to elevate perspectives, to share ideas and ideals and understand how enriching it can be to build “a community with a shared future for mankind,” as Xi Jinping puts it.

A highly enhanced turning point, opening new horizons, offering the possibility of enriching exchanges in a multipolar world, and with a call for socialism like we haven’t known before.

Let’s not forget this moment in time also resonates with the 13th century, when Venetian Marco Polo, traveling through the Silk Roads to Asia, brought back to Europe the freshness of the Eastern winds, with news from Kublai Khan’s Yuan Dynasty, including the “sublimation” of money into a lighter form, from coin to paper.

At that time, there was a stellium (a concentration of planets) in Capricorn just as we had in 2020, with the following Jupiter-Saturn conjunction in Aquarius (although not as a Great Mutation), and Pluto’s ingress into Aquarius as we will also have in 2023/2024. It is an absurdly dystopian context, but a turning point for a new conception of reality and the possibility for surprising new horizons.

A new world system is in the air

PE: Giorgio Agamben has referred to that famous Foucault intuition in Les Mots et les Choses, when Foucault writes that humankind may disappear like a figure drawn in the sand being erased by waves hitting the shore. The striking image may apply to our present, mutating condition, as we are about to enter a trans-human and even post-human era, dominated by artificial intelligence (AI) and genetic engineering.

Agamben argues that Covid-19, global warming and, more radically, direct digital access to our psychic life – all these elements are destroying humanity. Would the Great Mutation install a different paradigm – and lead us away from post-humanity?

FG: The rapid development in technology will be something seriously complex to deal with. It will be amazing in many ways, but not all pretty, presenting undeniable challenges, some of which are already here and about to intensify.

What are the effects of technology and artificial intelligence in both our organic and our subjective bodies? Mind control with bidirectional devices, both collecting information and inducing commands is a work in progress.

Perverse levels of technological control of society are a serious concern as Pluto, aka Hades, lord of the underworld, will also transit in technological and futuristic Aquarius from 2023/24 on, up until 2043/44 – times of intense social transformation, when technological advancements will blow our minds and the very conception of science will change considerably, but with serious risks of trans-human and post-human madness.

We cannot disregard our organicity. We cannot disregard our subjectivity, either. Pluto is about transformation or domination – in other words, quoting a recent article of yours: “Here’s our future: hackers or slaves.”

We’ve got to go hacking not only in the objective sense – which surely becomes more and more a desirable skill – but in the subjective sense as well, finding lines of flight and keeping Eros alive, the life force in us vivid.

Considering we’re already here, living through dystopian times, we might as well make the best out of this undeniably epic adventure. Instead of succumbing to fear and isolation, overtaken by the doom and gloom, let’s not forget Wallerstein’s observation on destiny versus free will – a very cool take, by the way, which my experience as an astrologer observing collective and individual cycles very much confirms: Both exist.

During the stable period of a world-system, its normal life when its structure is functioning well, even if there are some fluctuations in it, it is very hard to change things in the system, it tends to stabilization. It’s destiny: you gotta put a whole lot of effort to get perhaps very little change trying to escape destiny.

But when the world-system has reached its final phase, it can no longer be rescued and there is a lot of instability. The crisis is not going away and the only possibility is change, in one way or another – it’s free will time. In the structural crisis, Wallerstein says we have more free will, our actions have a stronger impact and every little move counts to decide in which direction the change of the system will go.

In our personal lives at this turning point in time, as Foucault questions, we may also ask ourselves: As humans, are we an obstacle or obstruction? Are we a way of imprisoning life – or are we an opening, a line of flight?

In regard to Foucault’s words you and Agamben bring to light, please allow me to refer to the previous paragraph, just before that final one in Les Mots et les Choses, when he states that by “taking a relatively short chronological sample within a restricted geographical area – European culture since the sixteenth century – one can be certain that man is a recent invention within it.”

The “man” he is referring to as the effect of a change in the fundamental arrangements of knowledge a couple of centuries ago, with the newer arrangements perhaps about to end, is within European references. That is neither the beginning nor the end of man, nor its only interesting expression. With huge, deep appreciation for so much of European culture, perhaps one of the things coming to a necessary end is Eurocentrism.

Nonetheless, of course, it is deeply worrying how faces are being at the same time digitally traced by machines and hidden from other humans by masks – especially the effects of that in children.  The current transition is not without epistemological effects and effects on how we conceive man, humans. But it’s not all said and done.

To counter the objectification of humans, it may be timely to draw from the Tupis’ conception of human beings: tu + pi , seated sound. A human being is a sound which has taken a seat, has taken place and vibrates. We gotta keep our bodies, faces and words vibrant. For the native South American Tupis, each human being is a new music, a new word vibrating and co-creating life with others and nature.

It seems that the deeper roots of aboriginal-indigenous wisdom still need to be more fully acknowledged and reintegrated in the Americas before the reinvention of the world in the West can take place.

Now winds blow from the East and from Eurasia, inspiring new forms of co-existence. But the controllers of capital, wealth and worldly power won’t give it up without a fight – or a few wars and a heavy load of social control via technology, capturing bodies and minds. What will it be – Great Reset or Great Mutation?

Is there a way out? Yes. And it seems to go along the New Silk Roads and the Eurasia Integration – literally to some important extent, but symbolically as well. The West can gain a lot from opening up to the Eastern winds, the news and the ideas they bring, stories of a community of shared future for mankind. A new world-system is in the air.

Originally published on Asia-Times

Featured image: The Grand Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn is upon us and there is no looking back. Image: Twitter

Capitalism and patriotism do not share the same stable. When those in the business of accumulating profits suggest a love for flag and country, be wary.  Wars might take place and trade agreements struck by governments, but the capitalist will go for the market that matters, whatever the flag.

A recent exponent of this proposition is Sir Jim Ratcliffe, a billionaire who was a strong advocate for Britain leaving the European Union.  In approaching negotiations with the EU after the referendum result, he had an instruction to Britain’s diplomats: “We must listen, we must be unwaveringly polite and retain our charm.  But there is no room for weakness or crumpling at 3am when the going gets tough and when most points are won or lost.”  He praised Britain’s “decent set of cards”: London as a key financial centre; companies such as Mercedes continuing to sell cars in the country.

This sentiment was echoed by other wealthy British billionaires who simply assumed that the consequences of a UK exit from the EU were going to be minor ripples rather than a massive shake.  It was the sort of advice given by occupants of mansions and gilded penthouses, gradually ossifying with time.  Lord Anthony Bamford, Chairman of JCB and Construction Equipment, claimed from his summit of comfort that “European markets are important to many UK businesses, including JCB, and this will not change.”  The UK, being the “world’s fifth largest trading nation” had “little to fear from leaving the EU.”

Ditto the Barclay twins Sir David and Sir Frederick and John Caudwell, founder of Phones4u.  Caudwell remains dogmatically convinced that the EU was thieving from Britons, claiming that the “Brussels Bully Boys” had benefited “by £80 billion in trade benefit in trading with Britain,” plundered the UK’s fishing waters and obtained “£8 billion in net value from the country.”

In the aftermath of the Brexit vote in 2016, Ratcliffe’s business mind initially turned to the Union Jack and all matters Britannic. He had hoped to build the Grenadier off-roader, inspired by the original Land Rover Defender, at a new plant at Bridgend in south Wales.  To do so showed, according to Ratcliffe, “a significant expression of confidence in British manufacturing”.  It also showed a leap of faith on his part, given how he had made his previous fortune.  As he told the Times in September 2017, “Maybe it’s a little bit arrogant for a chemical company to think it can produce a world class 4×4 but I think we can have confidence we can manufacture things.”

But Sir Jim, with fine arrogance, was sniffing for other options, as have many firms who have been relocating, closing, and hacking through staff.  In July, Ratcliffe’s Ineos Automotive began negotiations to purchase Mercedes-Benz’s Hambach site in Moselle.  He was all praise for the facility and the workforce, which he considered “world-class”.  His company had “set out a vision to build the world’s best utilitarian 4×4, and at our new home in Hambach, we will do just that.”

The Welsh Labour MP for Ogmore, Chris Elmore, was unimpressed by the extolling of French expertise at the expense of a British workforce.  “The highly-skilled and dedicated workforce in Ogmore, Bridgend and surrounding areas would have risen to the challenge.”

Sir James Dyson, despite being warm for his country’s EU departure, has also given Brexiteers a false sense of Making Britain Great Again.  In September 2017, the inventor revealed his dreams to employees that “we’ve begun work on a battery electric vehicle, due to launch in 2020.”  In immodest terms, this would become something like a European Tesla.

Such optimism began to sour.  First came an epiphany on where the cars would be manufactured.  In October 2018, Dyson abandoned RAF Hullavington as a production site for the proposed cars, preferring Singapore.   Twelve months later, staff were informed that, despite developing “a fantastic electric car,” the project had not proved to be “commercially viable.”  That same year, it became clear to all that Singapore was his new love, with reports that Dyson had spent $54.24 million on purchasing the small state’s most expensive penthouse at Guoco Tower.

Dyson had also taken a shine to Singapore’s company tax arrangements.  Chief executive for Dyson’s company Jim Rowan suggested that the decision had little to with Brexit or even that thorny issue of tax.  He preferred using a hideous term to cover the obvious: “future-proofing”.  The billionaire was merely being prudent.  But Rowan also tellingly revealed that Dyson should not be considered a British entity so much as a “global technology company.”  Patriotism could sod it.

Not to be outdone on the issue of tax, Ratcliffe has also made a critical move on preserving his earnings.  Just to show how bound up he feels to his fellow Britons, the Ineos boss has also changed his tax domicile.  Brexit Britain will no longer be receiving tax revenue from a man whose wealth is valued at £17.5 billion.  His move to Monaco will save him, and lose the UK government, £4 billion.  Patriotic he might claim to be, but certainly not when it comes to his wallet.  As Jonathan Freedland caustically observes, such figures are part of “a Brexiteer elite who believe that the pain of Brexit is for the little people.”

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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: [email protected]

Thousands of people have been unable to work or perform daily activities, or required care from a healthcare professional, after getting the new COVID-19 vaccine, according to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

As of Dec. 18, 3,150 people reported what the agency terms “Health Impact Events” after getting vaccinated.

The definition of the term is: “unable to perform normal daily activities, unable to work, required care from doctor or health care professional.”

As The Epoch Times’ Zachary Stieber reports, the people reporting the negative effects reported them through V-safe, a smartphone application. The tool uses text messages and web surveys to provide personalized health check-ins and allows users to quickly tell the CDC if they are experiencing side effects.

The CDC and Pfizer, which produces the vaccine with BioNTech, didn’t respond to request for comments.

The information was presented by Dr. Thomas Clark, a CDC epidemiologist, to the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, an independent panel that provides recommendations to the agency, on Saturday.

The CDC said that 272,001 doses of the vaccine were administered as of Dec. 19. That means most people who were vaccinated did not experience negative effects.

The CDC has identified six case reports of anaphylaxis, or severe allergic reaction, that occurred following vaccination with the new vaccine, Clark reported. Other case reports were reviewed and determined not to be of anaphylaxis.

In an update on Friday, the agency stressed that anyone who has ever had a severe allergic reaction to any ingredient in a COVID-19 vaccine should not get that vaccine. People with severe allergic reactions to other vaccines should consult their doctor about getting the new vaccine while those with a history of anaphylaxis not related to vaccines “may still get vaccinated.”

“CDC recommends that people with a history of severe allergic reactions not related to vaccines or injectable medications – such as allergies to food, pet, venom, environmental, or latex – may still get vaccinated,” the CDC said.

“People with a history of allergies to oral medications or a family history of severe allergic reactions, or who might have a milder allergy to vaccines (no anaphylaxis) – may also still get vaccinated.”

Anyone who experiences anaphylaxis after getting the first vaccine should not get the second shot, the CDC said. COVID-19 vaccines are meant to be given across two doses, spaced about three weeks apart.

At least five healthcare workers in Alaska experienced adverse reactions after getting the Pfizer vaccine, the Anchorage Daily News reported. One of two experiencing adverse reactions at the Bartlett Regional Hospital required treatment at the hospital for at least two nights.

An Illinois hospital halted vaccinations after four workers suffered adverse reactions.

Dr. Peter Marks, the director of Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, told reporters in a call on Thursday night that the agency is working with the CDC, and colleagues in the United Kingdom, on probing the allergic reactions.

“We’ll be looking at all of the data we can from each of these reactions to sort out exactly what happened. And we’ll also be looking to try to understand which components of the vaccine might be helping to produce them,” he said.

A container of 5 doses of COVID-19 vaccine sits on a table at Roseland Community Hospital in Chicago, Ill., on Dec. 18, 2020. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Noting that he was speculating, Marks said it’s known that polyethylene glycol – a component present in both the Pfizer vaccine and one from Moderna that regulators approved earlier in the day – can be associated, uncommonly, with allergic reactions.

“So that could be a culprit here. And that’s why we’ll be watching very closely,” he said. “But we just don’t know at this point.”

Both vaccines have “systemic side effects,” which are “generally mild,” Marks said.

They go away after a day. According to the FDA website, the most commonly reported side effects include tiredness, headache, muscle pain, and chills. The agency said they go away after several days.

One volunteer in Pfizer’s late-stage clinical trial experienced an allergic reaction. Two people in Moderna’s phase 3 clinical trial experienced anaphylactic reactions, the company said during a meeting on Thursday. But the data showed the benefits outweigh the risk, FDA officials said, as they granted emergency use authorization to the vaccines about seven days apart.

People who get a COVID-19 vaccine should be monitored for at least 15 minutes after getting vaccinated, according to the CDC.

If someone experiences a severe allergic reaction against getting a COVID-19 vaccine, vaccination providers are supposed to provide rapid care and call for emergency medical services. The person should continue to be monitored in a medical facility for at least several hours.

Featured image courtesy of Zero Hedge

Mass testing of people without covid-19 symptoms is “not an accurate way of screening the general population,” a senior figure at the Department of Health and Social Care has said in a letter seen by The BMJ (see Related content).

The comments were made by James Bethell, , in response to a letter from an MP raising concerns about blanket polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing on behalf of a constituent.

In his letter Bethell stated that “swab testing people with no symptoms is not an accurate way of screening the general population, as there is a real risk of giving false reassurance.” He added, “Widespread asymptomatic testing could undermine the value of testing, as there is a risk of giving misleading results. Rather, only people with covid-19 symptoms should get tested.”

The comments were made as the government expanded mass testing of asymptomatic people after a pilot scheme in Liverpool and announced a further rollout of widespread testing in schools.

Swabs are used both for PCR tests and for rapid tests that have been deployed by the government for mass testing in Liverpool and care homes and do not need to be sent to a laboratory for results. One of the main rapid tests used is the Innova Lateral Flow SARS-CoV-2 antigen test, which involves a self-administered swab. However, data released from the Liverpool pilot programme showed that this test detected just 48.89% of covid-19 infections in asymptomatic people when compared with a PCR test.1

When questioned about the letter a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Social Care told The BMJ, “The government is committed to using lateral flow tests in community testing to break the chains of transmission among those with asymptomatic infection . . . The minister’s letter was in reply to a specific question about ‘blanket PCR testing,’ and it remains the case that PCR testing is prioritised for symptomatic testing.”

Originally published on InfoBrics 

Featured image courtesy of InfoBrics

In his wide-ranging annual media conference held Dec 17, Russian President Vladimir Putin expects the newly elected U.S. President Joe Biden and his administration to build back better relations with Russia and further to cooperate in resolving a number of pressing regional problems around the world.

Russia and United States relations have slipped downward, many issues have still remained unresolved during the past years. Russia is, currently slapped with Western and European sanctions. Russia has also stepped up confrontation with Western and European powers over many of these issues.

“The Russian-U.S. relations have become a hostage of the U.S. domestic policy. In my opinion, it’s bad for them but it’s their choice, let them do what they want. We believe the U.S. president-elect will sort things out due to his domestic and foreign policy experience and hope that all arising problems, if not all then at least some of them, will be resolved during the tenure of the next administration,”

Putin said at his annual press conference.

For example, speaking about new arms race, the president made it clear that this race has been going on for a long time – since the US withdrew from the ABM Treaty in 2002. The only arms control agreement that is still in effect is the New START Treaty, and even that, according to Putin, will end in February 2021. That however, Moscow is ready for dialogue on this topic with the new US administration.

The other issues of international relations focused on Belarus, Nagorno-Karabakh, Moldova and Kyrgyzstan. Touching on the steps by the Ukrainian leadership to resolve the conflict in Donbass, Putin noted that Russia will not only continue, but will bolster its support for Donbass. As for Nagorno-Karabakh, Putin said that the situation there erupted not as a result of outside interference.

Referring to interference in each other affairs, Putin explicitly pointed in his comments at the conference attended by both local and foreign reporters that Russian hackers did not help the Donald Trump campaign and did not interfere in the U.S. electoral process.

“Russian hackers did not help the incumbent U.S. president get elected and did not interfere in internal affairs of that great nation. That’s mere hearsay aimed to spoil relations between Russia and the United States and to deny recognition to the legitimacy of the incumbent U.S. president for U.S. domestic political considerations,”

he said.

Meanwhile, Russia knows that there will be attempts to interfere in the elections to the State Duma in 2021 from the outside, but it is capable of countering them. “Of course, there’ll be attempts to interfere; they always act this way, and not only in our elections but virtually around the world. This is global politics, both as concerns bases around the world and interference around the world. We know this and are preparing for this,” Putin said.

During the conference that lasted for about four and half hours, and intended to round up or summarized activities of the year, Putin also discussed at length various important questions both internal and external, particularly the economy and health central to Russians. Some of the domestic issues are discussed as follows.

Coronavirus Pandemic and Vaccine

On the current situation with coronavirus, Putin reminded efforts that are being taken inside Russia, called to global cooperation in the fight against the pandemic. While Russia claims to be the first in the race for vaccine, Putin said that cooperation between the Gamaleya Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology, and that of AstraZeneca on a coronavirus vaccine is particularly important for the whole world.

“There are a lot of rumors indeed, but I wouldn’t like to talk about this to the whole country and the whole world, especially considering that we don’t see any evidence confirming the accusations leveled at anyone. We should focus on something else, not look for culprits but combine efforts to fight the problem, and this would be the right line of our cooperation,”

he said

The Anglo-Swedish AstraZeneca is ready to work with Russia, and is in the process of signing a corresponding agreement. This is very good especially top-notch specialists – this is a large and good company with a global reputation – join forces, including with their Russian partners.

“Thank God, our foreign colleagues turned their faces towards us too and are ready for cooperation, they’re struggling with something, and the AstraZeneca company is ready to work with us, a relevant agreement is signed now. It is excellent, I am happy when experts of such a high level, – and it’s a good major company that’s internationally renowned – when they join efforts with Russian partners among others, I am sure the results will be a very good thing not only for our citizens, but the whole world,”

he said.

Putin explained that as the pandemic ranges on, millions of coronavirus vaccine doses will have be produced in Russia at the beginning of next year. The primary objective is to vaccinate the Russian population. “Production of this vaccine requires relevant plants, enterprises, and hardware – all that will be scaled up. I expect all of these plans to be fulfilled and production of millions of vaccine doses to be ensured next year, at the beginning of the year,” he said.

With regard to cooperation with other countries, it will boost the technological capabilities, enterprises to produce the vaccine, foreign countries will invest their own money into expanding their production capacities and purchasing the corresponding equipment.

Foreign countries will be investing in these projects: the enlargement of production facilities and the purchase of equipment. “As for cooperation with foreign countries: nothing is stopping us from manufacturing vaccine components at facilities in other countries precisely because we need time to enhance technological capacities of our vaccine manufacturing enterprises. This does not hinder vaccination in the Russian Federation in any way,” he said.

Domestic politics, Employment and Living Standards

He spoke extensively about domestic economy and measures that are needed to improve the situation. “We all know that this was a challenging year, to an extent that I can hardly find the right words to describe it. It is a matter of concern for all of us: the coronavirus pandemic. However, not only Russia, but also the entire world has been hit by this scourge,” he stressed.

What is a pandemic? It means lockdowns, curbed production, declining passenger and cargo traffic and all that goes with it. Unfortunately, it also means fewer jobs, and lower incomes. This has all become a reality.

“As I have said at the outset, this is a challenging situation. When I said that the pandemic caused the shutdown of several manufacturers, rising unemployment and a decline in disposable incomes, these were not empty words, and not something that can be overlooked. This means that we see and understand what is going on,”

he said.

Unemployment rate in Russian was 4.7 percent at the beginning of 2020; now, as you know, it has grown to 6.3 percent, he pointed out, and added, “Everything we do to support the economy, to support the affected industries, is aimed at maintaining employment. We have [unemployment at] 6.3 percent now, but I hope that over the next year, we will be able to bring it down to the earlier figures. A positive trade balance be considered as a good indicator. It creates conditions for good macroeconomic development.”

Some statistics have shown that in 2000, 29 percent of the population lived below the poverty line. Almost one third of the country earned less than the subsistence level. One person out of three lived below the poverty line earning less than the subsistence level. In 2017, it was 12.3 percent of the population below the poverty line. Unfortunately, today this level increased to 13.5 percent, due to internal problems. Of course, 20 million people is still too many.

Of course, there is a plan, according Putin. Reducing the number of people below the poverty line is one of our key priorities. First, here is the plan: by 2030, the need to bring down the share of the population living in poverty from the current 13.5 percent to 6.5 percent. Having 6.5 percent of the population earning less than the subsistence level is still not good, but the need to be realistic. This is a far-reaching, but feasible goal, according Putin.

He, however, offered an elaboration on what should be done. “But the main point, is that we need to develop the economy, reach the national development goals and implement national projects that contain these goals, create new jobs, raise the economy to a new level meeting the latest requirements, as well as develop artificial intelligence, digitization and modern production lines that would allow people to have interesting jobs and receive decent incomes. The entire package of our measures envisaged by the national projects aimed at reaching these goals.”

Domestic Tourism

Putin used the platform to promote Russia’s domestic tourism. He urged the media, those who work online to support the development of domestic tourism, show and talk more often about the opportunities that the country and its various regions offer for Russian citizens and guests from abroad. In general, it would be great if Russian nationals explore domestic tourism opportunities more. They can benefit from the related government support measures and go to St Petersburg. There is no need to open borders for this.

Air travel has been among the affected sectors. “In this sense, it is definitely important to enable airlines to serve Russian destinations and for our companies to operate overseas routes. We have 32 million people flying abroad every year. Let’s redirect this passenger flow to St Petersburg. These people spend $35 billion abroad every year. If we can attract them to domestic destinations and thus promote domestic tourism, this would be great. St Petersburg deserves it. I am certain that we will succeed. It will happen as soon as it becomes possible,” he said about domestic tourism.

“The government should provide the necessary support, of course, infrastructural primarily. We will allocate appropriate funds for this; money has been earmarked. As I have said, we will support business in general, including regional businesses, and an agency is being created that is responsible for domestic tourism exclusively,” he informed the conference participants.

Putin’s first news conference in 2001 was also the shortest one lasted for one hour and 35 minutes. In 2019, Putin spent 4 hours and 18 minutes on the podium in front of the audience to answer questions from 57 mass media outlets.

As usual, the news conference was broadcast live by Rossiya 1, Rossiya 24, Channel One, NTV and MIR television channels, as well as Mayak, Vesti FM and Radio Rossii radio stations. According the official document, a total of 774 journalists were accredited at the news conference, including 237 at the International Trade Center.

Due to the current coronavirus pandemic, there were special platforms set up in all federal districts (Tula, St. Petersburg, Rostov-on-Don, Stavropol, Nizhny Novgorod, Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk and Vladivostok), where representatives of regional media participated and asked questions, while some representatives of federal and foreign media representatives worked at the World Trade Centre in Moscow.

Featured image courtesy of the author

Today, a new coordinated psychological operation has been sprung to convince every living patriot across the Five Eyes sphere of influence that the enemy of the free world who lurks behind every conspiracy to overthrow governments, and western values is…China.

Over the past weeks, a surge in slanderous, and often conjectural stories of Chinese subversion has repeatedly been fed to a gullible western audience desperate for an enemy image to attach to their realization that an obvious long-term conspiracy has been unleashed to destroy their lives. While the left has been fed with propaganda designed to convince them that this enemy has taken the form of the Kremlin, the conservative consumers of media have been fed with the narrative that the enemy is China.

The reality is that both Russia and China together have a bond of principled survival upon which the entire multipolar order is based. It is this alliance which the actual controllers of today’s empire wish to both destroy and ensure no western nation joins… especially not the USA.

Every day we read that secret lists of millions of Chinese communist party members have infiltrated western national governments or that espionage honey pots have targeted anti-Trump politicans in California, or that Chinese military are conducting operations in Canada, or that China intentionally created COVID-19 and deployed it around the world to subvert the western liberal order.

In all cases, the stories pumped out by mainstream media rags reek of

1) Five Eyes propaganda psy-op techniques, and often unverified accusations, while

2) deflecting from the actually verifiable British Intelligence tentacles caught repeatedly shaping world events, regime change, infiltration, assassination and conspiracies for over a century including the push to overthrow Trump under a color revolution.

Among the most destructive of these conspiracies orchestrated by British Intelligence during the past century was the artificial creation of the Cold War which destroyed the hopes for a multipolar world of win-win collaboration guided by a U.S.-China-Russia alliance as envisioned by FDR and Henry Wallace.

When reviewing how this perversion of history was manufactured, it is important to hold firmly in mind the parallels to the current anti-China/anti-Russian operations now underway.

Cold War Battle Lines are Drawn

Historians widely acknowledge that the actual catalyst for the Cold War occurred not on March 5, 1946, but rather on September 5, 1945. It was at this moment that a 26-year-old cipher clerk left the Soviet Embassy in Ottawa with a list of code names for supposed spies planted within the British, Canadian and American governments controlled by the Kremlin. In total this young defector took telegram notes attributed to his boss Colonel Zabotin and 108 other strategic documents that supposedly proved the existence of this Soviet conspiracy to the world for the first time.

The young clerk’s name was Igor Gouzenko, and the scandal that emerged from his defection not only created one of the greatest abuses of civil liberties in Canadian history, but a sham trial based on little more than hearsay and conjecture. In fact, when the six microfilms of evidence were finally declassified in 1985, not a single document turned out be worthy of the name (more to be said on that below).

The outcome of the Gouzenko Affair resulted in the collapse of all U.S.-Canada-Russia alliances that had been fostered during fires of anti-fascist combat of WWII.

Voices like Henry Wallace (former Vice-President under FDR) watched the collapse of potential amidst the anti-Communist hysteria and sounded the alarm loudly saying:

“Fascism in the postwar inevitably will push steadily for Anglo-Saxon imperialism and eventually for war with Russia. Already American fascists are talking and writing about this conflict and using it as an excuse for their internal hatreds and intolerances toward certain races, creeds and classes.”

In “Soviet Mission Asia,” Wallace revealed the true agenda for the conspiracy that would infiltrate nation states of the west and orchestrate the next 75 years of history saying: “Before the blood of our boys is scarcely dry on the field of battle, these enemies of peace try to lay the foundation for World War III. These people must not succeed in their foul enterprise. We must offset their poison by following the policies of Roosevelt in cultivating the friendship of Russia in peace as well as in war.”

This fight against those actual top-down controllers of fascism whom Wallace had bravely put into the spotlight would sadly not prove successful. Between 1945 and the collapse of Wallace’s Progressive Party USA presidential bid in 1948, those strongest anti-Cold War voices both in the USA and in Canada were promptly labelled “Russian agents” and saw their reputations, careers and freedoms destroyed under the CIA-FBI managed spectre of the Red Scare and later McCarthyism. In Canada, Wallace’s Progressive Party co-thinkers took the form of the Labor Progressive Party (LPP) then led by Member of Parliament Fred Rose, LPP leader Tim Buck and LPP National Organizer Sam Carr- all three would represent the anti-Cold War fight to save FDR’s vision in Canada and all of whom would figure prominently in the story of Igor Gouzenko.

The Gouzenko Hoax Kicks Off

When Canada’s Prime Minister MacKenzie King heard those claims made by Gouzenko, he knew that it threatened the post war hopes for global reconstruction and for this reason was very hesitant to make the unverifiable claims public for many months or even offer the defector sanctuary for that matter.

After the story was eventually strategically leaked to American media, anti-communist hysteria skyrocketed forcing MacKenzie King to establish the Gouzenko Espionage Royal Commission on February 5, 1946 under Privy Council Order 411. Earlier Privy Council Order 6444 had already been passed extending the War Measures Act beyond the end of the war and permitting for detention incommunicado, psychological torture and removing Habeus Corpus of all those who would be accused of espionage.

By February 15, 1946 the first 15 targets were arrested and held for weeks in isolation in Ottawa’s Rockliffe Military Barracks without access to family or legal counsel. All those arrested without charge suffered weeks of psychological torture, sleep deprivation and were put on suicide watch with no communication with anyone but inquisitors from the Royal Commission. Both Judges who presided over the show trial were rewarded with Orders of Canada and were made Supreme Court Justices in the wake of the affair.

With a complete disregard for any notion of civil liberties (Canada still had no Bill of Rights), lead counsel E.K. Williams blatantly argued for the creation of the Royal Commission “because it need not be bound by the ordinary rules of evidence if it considers it desirable to disregard them. It need not permit counsel to appear for those to be interrogated by or before it”.

During the show trial, none of the defendants were allowed to see any evidence being used against them and everyone involved including RCMP officers were threatened with 5 years imprisonment for speaking about the trial publicly. The only person who could speak and write boundlessly to the media was the figure of Igor Gouzenko himself. Whenever appearing on TV or in court, Gouzenko who was to charge over $1000 for some interviews and received generous book deals, and government pensions for life, always appeared masked in a paper bag on his head. Even though this cipher clerk never actually met any of the figures standing trial, his testimony against them was treated like gold.

By June 27, 1946 the Royal Commission released its final 733 page report which, along with Gouzenko’s own books, became the sole unquestionable gospel used and re-used by journalists, politicians and historians for the next decades as proof of the vast Russian plot to undermine western values and steal atomic secrets. There was in fact nowhere else to go for a very long time if a researcher wished to figure out what actually occurred.

As it so happened, all trial records were either destroyed or “lost” in the days after the commission disbanded, and if people wanted to look at the actual evidence they would have to wait 40 years when it was finally declassified.

The result of the trials?

By the end of the whole sordid affair, 10 of the 26 arrested were convicted and imprisoned for anywhere from 3-7 years. While these convictions are themselves often cited as “proof” that the Gouzenko evidence must have been valid, on closer inspection we find that this is merely the effect of a game of smoke and mirrors.

It must first be noted that of the 10 found guilty, not one indictment or conviction of espionage was found. Instead, five defendants were found guilty of assisting in the acquisition of fake passports during the 1930s which were used by Canadian volunteers to fight with the MacKenzie-Papineau Battalions in the Spanish Civil War against Franco’s fascist coup while the other five were convicted of violating Canada’s Official Secrets Act during WWII entirely on Gouzenko’s testimony. The other 16 targets were released without ever having been charged of a crime. The two leaders of the supposed spy ring that received the longest sentences were Labor Progressive Party leaders Fred Rose and Sam Carr who had been the loudest advocates of FDR’s international New Deal and the exposure of the financial sponsors of fascism that aimed at world empire (more to be said on this in an upcoming report).

When the Gouzenko evidence was finally declassified in 1985, Canadian journalist William Reuben wrote a fascinating analysis called “The Documents that Weren’t There” where he noted the absence of anything one could reasonably call “evidence” among the thousands of items.

After spending weeks investigating the six reels of declassified microfilm, Reuben found only what could be described as “a hodgepodge, reminiscent of one of Professor Irwin Corey’s double talk monologues”.

Listing the vast array of telephone directories from 1943, RCMP profiles, lists of travel expense vouchers and passport applications, Reuben asked:

“What is one to make of this jumble? With no indication as to when any of the exhibits were obtained by the RCMP, how they related to espionage or any wrongdoing and for the most part, no indication of when they were placed in evidence at the hearings it is impossible to determine their significance, authenticity or relationship to other evidence.”

In short, not a single piece of actual evidence could be found.

Additionally when reviewing the 8 handwritten telegrams of Russian notes outlining the spy code names and instructions from the Kremlin which Gouzenko originally took from his embassy in 1945, no forensic evidence was ever attempted to match the handwriting with Colonel Zubatov to whom it was attributed and who always denied the accusation.

Reuben goes further to ask where are the 108 secret documents that Gouzenko famously stole and upon which the entire case against the accused spies was based? These documents were not part of the declassified microfilms, and so he noted: “as with the eight telegrams, there is no physical evidence to prove that the originals existed or came from the Soviet Embassy”.

He also asked the valid question why it was only on March 2, 1946 (six months after Gouzenko’s defection) that any mention was made of the 108 documents?

Could the lack of evidence and the long gap in time be related to Gouzenko’s five and a half month stay at Ottawa’s Camp X spy compound under the control of Sir William Stephenson before his defection was made public? Could those apparent 108 documents used by Gouzenko’s dodgy dossier have anything to do with the Camp X Laboratory which specialized in forging letters and other official documents?

If you find yourself thinking about the parallels of this story to the more recent case of the Brookings Institute’s Igor Danchenko who was found to be the “source” of the dodgy dossiers used to create RussiaGate by MI6’s Christopher Steele, Richard Dearlove and Rhodes Scholar Strobe Talbott, then don’t be shocked. It means you are using your brain.

What was Camp X?

Camp X was the name given to the clandestine operations training center in the outskirts of Ottawa, Canada on December 6, 1941.

It was created by the British Security Cooperation (BSC) headed by Sir William Stephenson- a spymaster who worked closely with Winston Churchill. BSC was created in New York in 1940 as a covert operation set up by the British Secret Service and MI6 to interface with American intelligence. Since the USA was still neutral in the war, Camp X was used to train the Special Operations Executive, as well as agents from FBI’s Division 5 and OSS in the arts of psychological warfare, assassination, espionage, counter-intelligence, forgeries and other forms of covert action.

The leadership cadre that was to survive the purge of OSS in October 1945 and go on to lead the new CIA when it was formed in 1947 were all trained in Camp X.

In his book Camp X: OSS, Intrepid and the Allies’ North American Training Camp for Secret Agents, historian David Stafford notes that Gouzenko’s attempts to contact media and government offices on the night of September 5, 1945 were met with cold shoulders and even Prime Minister William Lyon MacKenzie King himself wanted nothing to do with the man, writing in his diary: “if suicide took place let the city police take charge and secure whatever there was in the way of documents, but on no account for us to take the initiative.”

It was only due to the combined direct intervention of Stephenson and Norman Robertson (head of External Affairs and leading Rhodes Scholar) after an emergency meeting, that King was persuaded to give Gouzenko sanctuary. King had not even known about Camp X’s purpose at the time.

While King wished to defend FDR’s vision for a post-war world of cooperation with Russia, Stafford notes: “Stephenson vigorously opposed King’s view. Like SIS headquarters in London, BSC (British Security Cooperation) for most of the war had operated a counter espionage section to keep an eye on Communist subversion… he was convinced, even before the Gouzenko affair, that BSC could provide the nucleus of a post-war intelligence organization in the Western Hemisphere. The cipher clerk’s defection provided him a golden opportunity”. (1)

Canadian Journalist Ian Adams had reported that Gouzenko’s “defection came at a wonderful time when there was tremendous resistance from the scientists involved in developing the atomic bomb. They wanted to see an open book on the development of nuclear power with everybody collaborating so that it wouldn’t become the ungodly arms race that it did become and is today. So if Gouzenko hadn’t fallen into the western intelligence services’ lap, they would have had to invent somebody like him.”

A Final Word on the Real Infiltration of Western Governments

As Henry Wallace and FDR understood all too well, the real subversive threat to world peace was not the Soviet Union, or China… but rather the supranational financial-intelligence-military architecture that represented the globally extended British Empire that had orchestrated the dismemberment of Russia during the Crimean War, the USA during the Civil War and China during two Opium Wars. This was and is the enemy of the Labour Progressive Party of Canada that took the form of the Fabian Society CCF run by 6 Rhodes Scholars and it was this Rhodes Scholar/Round Table agency that was resisted by Canadian nationalists O.D. Skelton and Ernest Lapointe, and which fully took over Canada’s foreign ministry with their deaths in 1941.

This story was told in my Origins of the Deep State in North America.

This same hive of Rhodes Scholars and Fabians increasingly took control of American foreign policy with the death of Franklin Roosevelt, the ouster of Wallace and the rise of the new Anglo-American Special Relationship manufactured by Churchill, Stephenson and their lackies in the USA. This is the beast that infiltrated and undermined labor unions across the Five Eyes during the Cold War and ensured that pesky patriots like Paul Robeson, John Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, and many others who resisted, would not be long for this world.

This is the structure whose hands have shown themselves time and again behind the dodgy dossiers that started the Iraq War, to the false intelligence used to justify wars in Libya, and Syria. It is the same structure which has been caught managing the regime change in the USA since 2016 with its assets cooking up dodgy dossiers accusing Russia of putting their puppet into the White House, to orchestrating mass vote fraud in the elections of 2020.

This is the same operation which has always aimed at dismembering the USA, Russia, China and every other nation state who may at any time utilize the power of their sovereignty to declare political and economic independence from this supranational parasite and choose to work together to establish a world of win-win cooperation rather than tolerate a new technocratic feudal dark age.

Matthew J.L. Ehret is a journalist, lecturer and founder of the Canadian Patriot Review. He can be reached at [email protected]

This article originally appeared on Strategic Culture Foundation

Note

(1) Stephenson immediately flew two of his top SIS officials in from the BSC HQ in New York to manage the Gouzenko affair for the next 8 months: Peter Dwyer (head of counter-espionage for BSC) and Jean-Paul Evans. Evans is an interesting figure whose SIS successor was none other than triple agent Kim Philby who replaced him when he left his post as British liaison to the FBI and CIA in 1949. Evans himself went onto work with leading Round Table controller and soon Governor General Vincent Massey in the creation of a new system of promoting the arts in Canada pouring millions of dollars into modernist/abstract art, music and drama under the Canada Council which grew out of the Massey-Levesque Royal Commission for the Arts in Canada. This body founded in 1957 took over the reins of control from the CIA and Rockefeller Foundations who had formerly enjoyed a near monopoly sponsoring such things as part of the post-WWII cultural war against communism. Stafford notes that “the man who impressed Ottawa with his love of the arts had also played an important part in the history of Anglo-Canadian secret intelligence.”

Related to the Gouzenko Affair, early September 1945.

It is worth noting that on September 15, 1945, the US released a secret plan to bomb 66 cities of the Soviet Union with more than 200 atomic bombs.

“On September 15, 1945 — just under two weeks after the formal surrender of Japan and the end of World War II — Norstad sent a copy of the estimate to General Leslie Groves, still the head of the Manhattan Project, and the guy who, for the short term anyway, would be in charge of producing whatever bombs the USAAF might want. As you might guess, the classification on this document was high: “TOP SECRET LIMITED,” which was about as high as it went during World War II. (Alex Wellerstein, The First Atomic Stockpile Requirements (September 1945)

The Kremlin was aware of the 1945 plan to bomb sixty-six Soviet cities. The documents confirm that the US was involved in the “planning of genocide” against the Soviet Union.

Let’s cut to the chase. How many bombs did the USAAF request of the atomic general, when there were maybe one, maybe two bombs worth of fissile material on hand? At a minimum they wanted 123. Ideally, they’d like 466. This is just a little over a month after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Of course, in true bureaucratic fashion, they provided a handy-dandy chart (Alex Wellerstein, op. cit)

Michel Chossudovsky, December 21, 2020

***

For further details see complete article see: 

“Wipe the Soviet Union Off the Map”, 204 Atomic Bombs against 66 Major Cities, US Nuclear Attack against USSR Planned During World War II

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, August 04, 2020

Dr. Wolfgang Wordarg, pulmonologist and former head of a public health department, and Dr. Michael Yeadon, ex-Pfizer research director for respiratory diseases, petitioned the EMA, the European Medicines Agency, on December 1, 2020, to immediately stop clinical trials of the Corona vaccines.

The petition has been supported by at least 80,000 people and can be further supported.

The flood of emails from concerned supporters was so high so that during the peaks the EMA’s server was temporarily unavailable. Nevertheless, as of December 11, 2020, there has been no response, no comment from the EMA on the petitioners’ submission.

In response to the petitioner’s email, Ms. Irene Bachmann ([email protected]), acting as Mr. Enzmann’s absentee deputy, responded, stating in substance that it was assumed that the EMA would get back to the petitioners on this matter.

As 2020News has learned, the petition has not yet been brought to the attention of the relevant staff of the entities responsible for deciding on vaccine approval at the national level – in Germany, for example, the Paul Ehrlich Institute. It is unclear why the EMA has not sought dialogue regarding the concerns raised with the institutes of the EU member states.

Dr. Wordarg and Dr. Yeadon see major vaccine threats to the population.

They point to the extremely short period of clinical trials: vaccines are supposed to be emergency licensed after a few months of human clinical trials, whereas in the normal course it takes five to ten years for a vaccine to undergo all safety testing.

There are significant concerns about the possible occurrence of an exuberant immune response, which, for example, had led to the death of all cats in a Corona vaccine under development for cats.

In addition, there are fears that the vaccine could render women infertile because it can trigger antibodies that can then attack not only the Corona viruses but also special proteins that are structurally very similar to the viruses and essential for the formation of a placenta. These dangers cannot be ruled out due to the extremely shortened observation period, which, the petitioners told 2020News, is not compatible with the European precautionary principle.

In the EU, the precautionary principle applies, among other things, to drug approval. A product is only approved in the EU if its harmlessness is essentially proven. This corresponds to the comparatively low level of compensation for physical damage suffered. If you can no longer use your arm because you suffer paralysis from a heart medication, you will receive a maximum of about €100,000 in compensation for the loss of enjoyment of life from the pharmaceutical company that caused the damage, if you win your lawsuit. In addition, the injuring party must pay for material resources and costs for caregivers who have become necessary due to the injurious event.

In the USA, the precautionary principle does not apply.

Here, the regulations regarding potentially hazardous products are much more manufacturer-friendly. Market approval is only denied to products for which the potential for harm has already been proven. However, injured persons in the USA receive incomparably higher compensation payments. In the case of a paralyzed arm, compensation payments of several million US dollars may be due in the USA. The fear of high compensation claims is a similarly effective deterrent in the USA as the precautionary principle is in Europe.

The TTIP, CETA, etc. trade agreements were intended to override the precautionary principle for Europe in favor of companies, but without changing the compensation rules. They would have given companies the most advantageous of both worlds: low barriers to market entry with little risk of being obliged to pay damaged from harmful products. TTIP did not come about, but CETA entered into force, at least provisionally, under pressure from lobbyists. The similarly structured free trade agreement with Japan (JEFTA) has been concluded. It remains to be seen to what extent these agreements will play a role in the Corona and lockdown events.

However, vaccinations are already a very low-risk proposition in both the U.S. and the European region. Liability for vaccine damage is shifted to the state in both legal systems. Accordingly, from an economic point of view, vaccine manufacturers have little reason to invest particularly heavily in studies or to refrain from marketing a potentially toxic vaccine. It is the responsibility of the government authorities to prevent damage to the population by careful examination and the prevention of undesirable influence on the authorities called upon to make decisions.

In the USA, the Emergency Preparedness and Response Act (PREP) applies in the event of damage caused by the use of drugs, medical devices and vaccines that, like the Corona vaccines, are marketed under emergency use authorizations. This could result in a complete exemption from liability for the manufacturing companies.

Featured image courtesy of 2020 News

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Canadian oil and gas company Recon Africa said in an August 2020 press release that they are planning to drill oil and gas wells into an environmentally sensitive, protected area in Africa that supplies the Okavango Delta with water.

The drilling location sits along the banks of the Kavango River, straddling the border between Namibia and Botswana, inside of the newly proclaimed Kavango Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area, called the KAZA Park.

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Image: Lake Nguma in the north part of the Delta. The Okavango Delta is one of the center pieces of the new KAZA Park. Lake Nguma is in a community-run conservancy that works in partnership with a private lodge called Nguma Island Lodge. 

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The Polluting Legacy Of Oil And GasThe main issue with fracking is that it uses a vast amount of water, as much as 35 million liters per frack, which it then leaves highly polluted, explains the US government.Fracking companies have invaded communities in the USA, made a lot of money and then departed, leaving hundreds of towns across America polluted and unable to clean up the mess, explains this US government study.The towns most affected? Economically disadvantaged communities with little ability to defend themselves and their homes against the greed of these industrial giants.

The produced water from fracking is so toxic that it will kill anything that drinks it, and it is often left on the ground or poorly disposed of, according to the US National Wildlife Federation.

Fracking has also been shown to have polluted the groundwater permanently in some US States where it has been allowed, according to a report published in Scientific American.

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Image: Halliburton’s Red Crew sets up a large slick-water hydraulic frac, or frack, on a gas pad in Colorado on Battlement Mesa.

The international governance site Governing, says that the financial losers in fracking are local communities, as drillers and national governments take profits and leave communities poorer and less well off than before they arrived.

Ohio State University explains  that fracking releases highly dangerous gases into the air that can cause cancer, birth defects and other serious long term health issues. These gases are unregulated, and even tiny amounts of exposure to them can cause cancer in the offspring of people and animals exposed.

Fracking companies are oil and gas companies and they have been lobbying governments for generations. This lobbying essentially weakens the regulations that frackers are forced to follow, which is one reason such a dangerous industry has been allowed to operate in such a harmful way, according to the journalist Hal Harvey at the news website Politico.

People On The Fracking Frontline

Rancher Tweety Blancett

Landowner: 200 wells on property, New Mexico, USA

“The well-heads are leaking, the pits have overflowed, they’re un-lined, and they seep into the water sources and into the springs. That was the main thing that caused us to quit ranching – it’s because our water’s contaminated”.

Lawyer Cormac Cullinan

Cullinan and Associates, Cape Town

“There is no question that environmental degradation hurts the poorest of the poor much more than it hurts anybody else. When developments like fracking are proposed the response that you get is that it creates jobs but frankly it depends what kind of jobs. There is no benefit in my view in creating jobs, which harm society”

How is it that a vaccine for the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which under normal conditions would take years to develop, was promptly launched in early November 2020?  The vaccine announced by Pfizer is based on an experimental gene editing mRNA technology which has a bearing on the human genome. 

Were the standard animal lab tests using mice or ferrets conducted?

Or did Pfizer “go straight to human “guinea pigs.”? Human tests began in late July and early August. “Three months is unheard of for testing a new vaccine. Several years is the norm.”  

The Lab’s “Mouse Point of View”

Our thanks to Large and JIPÉM

This caricature by Large + JIPÉM  explains our predicament:

Mouse No 1: “Are You Going to get Vaccinated”,

Mouse No. 2: Are You Crazy, They Haven’t finished the Tests on Humans”

Barely reported by the media: “Six people died in Pfizer’s late-stage trial of the COVID-19 vaccine, the FDA revealed just hours after Britain became the first country in the world to roll out the vaccine.”

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Excerpt from

The 2020 Worldwide Corona Crisis: Destroying Civil Society, Engineered Economic Depression, Global Coup d’État and the “Great Reset”

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, December 21, 2020

The release of the Inspector-General of the Australian Defence Force’s report on the Afghanistan Inquiry (the Brereton Report) into alleged war crimes committed by Australian SAS soldiers has prompted outrage and shock. Questions are being asked in Australia and around the world: what happened? How did it happen? And who bears responsibility?

It has provoked debates about how this could have happened in one of Australia’s elite fighting units and the extent to which it was due to a type of warrior culture in this institution; one more akin to “First Person Shooter” than the “ANZAC tradition” on which Australia typically prides itself. There is debate about what the Brereton findings mean in terms of the efficacy of the chain of command in the Australian armed forces in the light of the failure of senior officers to recognise what was going on and to respond to it. And there are, of course, debates about how these revelations effect the reputation of the Australian military and of Australia more broadly as a state that respects the laws of war, and the rules-based international order more broadly. Many commentators have been at pains to cast the perpetrators as outlaws, and to insist that these actions should not be taken as representative of others who have served in the Australian armed forces.

Finally, there has been extensive debate about what is to be done in the wake of these revelations. There is widespread consensus that those accused of the crimes should be prosecuted. The Australian Prime Minster has indicated that a special investigator will be appointed to prosecute allegations of Australian war crimes in Afghanistan. The Office of the Special Investigator will

“address the criminal matters made in the Inspector General’s report and investigate those allegations, gather evidence and, whether appropriate, refer briefs to the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions for consideration.”

Whose voices?

There are many voices and perspectives being expressed in the discussion of these alleged events and a plethora of issues being canvassed. All are important. These are critical debates that need to be out in the open for both the Australian and the world’s public. But there is one set of voices that is conspicuously absent: the voices of Afghan people.

An important component of the reporting done by the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Company) investigative team, which helped break this story to the Australian public, included travelling to Afghanistan to speak to the families who had survived some of these attacks and lost loved ones. But more generally one has to hunt in the maelstrom of commentary to find the perspectives of those who have suffered grievously from these events.

The debate focuses instead on the Australian actors and the consequences of these events for and in Australia. When the Afghan people are referred to, it is largely as victims. The paucity of recognition of the agency of those who have been subjected to failures of humanitarian protection, including the protection of international humanitarian law, is not unusual. It is often external actors, such as international institutions, international NGOs or outside government, who are seen as the protectors whilst affected communities are often portrayed simply as passive victims. This can serve to disempower affected populations.

Nevertheless, the field of prosecutions is an evolving arena in which there are important developments that warrant support and further analysis.

Providing an interface for the Afghan witnesses, victims and survivors

Attention must be given to those suspected of core international crimes, as well Australia’s legal obligation to investigate and prosecute those suspected in its armed forces. Yet, a third voice is also critical: how do we ensure that Afghan witnesses, victims and survivors are also heard and their views reflected in the investigative and prosecution processes? And how do we ensure they have the capacity to sufficiently interface with Australia’s legal system The Brereton report noted that any future legal process will include reparations and engage with the victims. Yet, more could be done.

There is an opportunity to draw upon the legal processes and procedures of other states and legal systems to ensure Afghan witnesses, victims and survivors are not only sufficiently engaged, but have the capacity to actively participate. Germany has one of the broadest universal jurisdictions in the world, and has also engaged actively in the investigation and prosecutions of core international crimes, including crimes suspected of its citizens. In this respect, there are many lessons learned that the Office of the Special Investigator and the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions (in the event of referrals) could draw upon from the German experience of criminal accountability for core international crimes. Moreover, the processes outlined below could be coordinated between the Office of the Special Investigator and the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions to ensure Afghan witnesses, victims and survivors have the opportunity to play an active role in the investigation and prosecution of those suspected of international crimes.

1. Support ‘criminal accountability communities’

First and foremost, the Office of the Special Investigator and the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions could work with groups that are genuinely representing the Afghan witnesses, victims and survivors. While it is not necessary for witnesses, victims and survivors of core international crimes to agree on all matters of justice, it does help if there is a coordinated and cooperative ‘criminal accountability community’[1] which works along-side the witnesses, victims and survivors of these crimes to ensure accountability.

While Australia has an independent legal system, core international crimes have a tendency to be sidelined by the political priorities of the State in question. As Geoffrey Robertson recently noted, the UK and the US are excellent relevant examples. Cooperative ‘criminal accountability communities’ are ‘private’ non state actors (led by witnesses, victims and survivors of core crimes) and state legal ‘officials’ that work together to ensure accountability for those most responsible for heinous international crimes. They are also supported by State government actors in that they do not intervene in the judicial process, nor seek to limit the application of international criminal law to the domestic jurisdiction.

A positive recent example is the work of the Office of the Federal Public Prosecutor General in Germany with the justice group Yazda when Daesh members – two German women and a foreign national – suspected of killing a Yazidi child in Syria, were arrested. It was the interaction with witnesses, victims and survivors, who were supported by a cooperative community of criminal accountability practitioners, which established the facts and the basis for the case against the Daesh suspects.

2. Accessory prosecutors or civil parties to the criminal prosecution

Moreover, in the German court system, victims can apply to act as ‘private accessory prosecutors’, alongside the public prosecutor. Similarly, in many other civil legal systems, such as in Spain and Senegal (including in the Extraordinary African Chamber) victims can request to participate as civil parties in a criminal prosecution.

In the Australian context, this would provide victims and survivors with the means to actively engage and participate in the trial. It would serve to provide greater confidence and transparency in the prosecution process. Again, while Australia is ordinarily known for its judicial independence, it has traditionally struggled with independence from government interference when it relates to prosecution of core international crimes according to universal jurisdiction, including prosecuting those suspected in the Australian armed forces. The fact that Australian journalists were arrested for attempting to expose allegations of war crimes in the Australian armed forces is testament to this lacklustre record.

Another example, is when Aung San Suu Kyi arrived in Australia in 2018, five lawyers filed a private application in the Melbourne magistrate court in Australia against her for crimes against humanity. She was in Australia in her capacity as Foreign Minister and de facto leader of Myanmar. The Australian attorney general, Christian Porter, granted her immunity, which had the effect of blocking any further judicial action within Australia. The Office of the Special Investigator and the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions could lead the way in providing victims and survivors with greater authority, as a counterbalance to the political concerns that have previously overshadowed allegations of core international crimes.

3. Ensure adequate translation that is made publicly available

Lastly, providing language translation services is key. In an ongoing German criminal prosecution in the Higher Regional Court of Koblenz against Anwar R., a Syrian senior government leader suspected of significant international crimes, including torture, the court has decided, where possible, to provide Arabic interpretation services. This will ensure that witnesses, victims and survivors of core crimes are adequately able to participate in the trial and also that official records are provided in German and Arabic. Similarly, The Office of the Special Investigator and the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions could ensure that witnesses, victims and survivors of core international crimes are empowered to participate through audio and written translation. This will also ensure that information about the case is accessible not only to victims and survivors, but more broadly across Afghanistan.

Conclusion

The uncovering of alleged Australian war crimes in Afghanistan demonstrates the importance of Australia’s independent media, insider witnesses and whistle-blowers, and civil society action in inhibiting the whitewashing of war crimes and avoidance of accountability.

Yet, adding some or all of the above processes to the newly established Office of the Special Investigator and the way the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions may engage with possible referrals allows Australians to view Afghan witnesses, victims and survivors as more than passive and anonymous actors in an enduring war that no longer has any concrete or tangible objectives from a Canberra perspective. Rather, it provides an opportunity to see the human side of Afghan people, which was not displayed towards them when the alleged crimes were committed. It allows us to see them as actors with agency. Like most Australians, Afghan witnesses, victims and survivors of core international crimes would prefer to seek justice for those suspected of crimes through an independent, impartial criminal court.

Notes:

[1] Melinda Rankin. forthcoming. De facto International Prosecutors in a Global Era: With My Own Eyes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Featured image courtesy of United Against Inhumanity

The Trump regime, its FDA, Pharma, and press agent media are playing fast and loose with human health.

On Thursday, the FDA authorized emergency use of Moderna’s experimental covid vaccine after doing the same for Pfizer days earlier.

The FDA did not approve these fast-tracked, experimental, hazardous to human health vaccines for human use.

It issued an emergency use authorization (EUA) to begin mass-vaxxing when the “emergency” claimed to exist is invented, not real.

The public is repeatedly and consistently lied to by politicians, Pharma, and establishment media — human health and welfare jeopardized by their actions.

The FDA’s EUA lets Pharma use unwitting Americans as guinea pigs for a high-risk, widespread human experiment that may turn out badly.

Ignored is that widely available, low-cost hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) combined with either azithromycin or doxycycline and zinc is highly effective in treating and curing covid when taken early after infection is diagnosed.

And so is ivermectin.

In congressional testimony, Dr. Pierre Kory said “mountains” of data on the FDA-approved drug shows it’s safe and effective in treating covid.

“If you take it, you will not get sick,” he stressed.

There’s a “solution” to what’s going on. “There is a drug that is proving to be of miraculous impact.”

“And when I say ‘miracle,’ I do not use that term lightly.”

Ivermectin “obliterates (covid) transmission.”

“I’m a lung specialist…an ICU specialist.”

“Early treatment is key. We need to offload the hospitals.”

When used as directed, ivermectin “prevents the (need for) hospitalization.”

Testimony by Kory fell on deaf ears, evidence presented by other medical and scientific experts in their writing and public remarks also ignored.

On December 13, Thailand Medical News (TMN) said the following about ivermectin:

When used “to treat COVID-19 in various stages of the disease (it’s) a more viable and proven option despite strong opposition from groups with vested interest in America and Europe.”

TMN cited a study conducted by researchers from Clinica Universidad de Navarra-Spain, ISGlobal and Inselspital.

“(P)ositive results from (their) trials showed that ivermectin merits being used to treat” covid.

A trial in India also had positive results, TMN reported.

“(N)umerous…observational clinical trials trials showed” ivermectin to be safe and effective in treating patients severe and milder covid symptoms.

“However, there was a concerted effort by the big pharmaceutical companies and even government authorities in America and Europe to ensure that cheaper repurposed generic drugs, herbs and supplements were never promoted to treat COVID-19 as they preferred to promote new expensive drugs that had no efficacy but were in fact toxic as there were financial gains for all vested parties,” said TMN.

According to general counsel for Children’s Health Defense (CHD) Mary Holland:

“To imagine that Moderna’s unlicensed COVID vaccine, tested for under a year, will be safe is wishful thinking.”

“There’s a reason vaccine producers insist on blanket indemnification from injuries and deaths” — because many occur after vaxxing that go largely unreported.

The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act and Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act give Pharma blanket immunity from liability for their vaccines — to assure their widespread use.

According to Public Citizen, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) owns a 50% stake in Moderna’s experimental covid vaccine.

Under a National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) contract, the Pentagon will buy 500 million doses of Moderna’s experimental covid vaccine for $9 billion — a bonanza for the company before an EUA was issued.

According to infectious disease expert Dr. Tal Brosh, experimental mRNA covid vaccines have “unique and unknown risks,” including inflammatory responses that may cause autoimmune diseases.

Both Pfizer and Moderna covid vaccines contain polyethylene glycol (PEG) that risks possible severe adverse reactions.

Moderna publicly admitted that use of PEG in its covid vaccine “could lead to significant adverse events in one or more of our clinical trials.”

Rushed development of now available Pfizer and Moderna covid vaccines circumvented longstanding protocol by skipping animal testing.

Months earlier, Children’s Health Defense warned followers of its reports to “beware the Moderna vaccine.”

The same warning applies to Pfizer’s entry into the covid vaccine sweepstakes.

Both are fast-tracked, inadequately tested, experimental vaccines that risk possible widespread adverse events from their use.

Highly touted vaccines to the rescue don’t work as promoted.

Despite years of research, no safe and effective coronavirus vaccines were ever developed.

No credible evidence suggests things changed with the availability of experimental vaccines Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.

As the saying goes, buyers beware.

Stay safe, not sorry, by refusing to be a Pharma guinea pig.

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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

The official inquiry into the 2017 Manchester bombing has yet to probe the links between the terrorist, Salman Abedi, and UK covert action during the 2011 war in Libya – yet there is no point in the inquiry unless it asks difficult questions the British establishment would rather avoid.

Four days after the terrorist atrocity at the Manchester Arena on 22 May 2017, which killed 22 people, Jeremy Corbyn made the bravest speech of his career.

The then Labour leader went much further than the pro forma condemnations of terrorist barbarity customary in the wake of such attacks.

He raised the forbidden subject of British foreign policy. Corbyn highlighted a connection between “wars our government has supported or fought in other countries and terrorism here at home”.

This intervention was all the more remarkable because he made it in the middle of a general election campaign. At first Conservative strategists could not believe their luck.

Thinking that Corbyn had gifted them the election, Ben Wallace, then security minister (and today defence secretary), went on the offensive. He declared: “We have to be unequivocal that no amount of excuses, no amount of twisted reasoning about a foreign policy here or a foreign policy there can be an excuse.”

But the Conservative strategists were wrong. Corbyn probably rose rather than fell in the polls after his speech.

The British public could see the Labour leader had a point. He was echoing the explicit warning given by British intelligence to then prime minister Tony Blair ahead of the Iraq war in 2003: “The threat from al-Qaeda will increase at the onset of any military action against Iraq.”

In other words, there is an undeniable link between foreign adventurism and so-called blowback at home.

Politicians rarely admit this connection. Indeed, Blair refused to accept the relevance of the Iraq invasion in the aftermath of the London terrorist attacks in July 2005, which killed 56 people.

Neither Blair nor David Cameron allowed a full, independent public inquiry into the London bombings, so links to British foreign policy were never properly investigated.

I am beginning to wonder whether the current inquiry into the Manchester Arena atrocity will duck the issue as well.

Elephant in the room

The inquiry was launched on 15 June this year. Since then Sir John Saunders, the chairman, has devoted his time to a minute examination of the response of the emergency services and security arrangements at the Manchester Arena.

But he has side-stepped the elephant in the room: Britain’s role in the downfall of Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi in the war of 2011.

Yet the facts are hard to ignore.

The Manchester bomber was Salman Abedi, a 22-year-old with a Libyan background whose family had fled and settled in Manchester to escape Gaddafi’s regime.

Abedi’s father, Ramadan, was a long-standing member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), which was founded to overthrow Gaddafi. The primary opposition force to Gaddafi, the LIFG was until 2009 an affiliate of al-Qaeda.

In 2011, both Ramadan and a young Salman Abedi returned to Libya to fight in the civil war that toppled Gaddafi, partly thanks to a Nato bombing campaign in which the UK played a key role.

Salman was later known to have made repeated trips to Libya, including one shortly before his attack in Manchester.

Perhaps Salman Abedi’s links to Libya are irrelevant. It would be wrong to rule out the idea that Abedi was “radicalised” in Britain.

Yet questions abound. Questions which scream out to be asked. Questions which Saunders has so far shown little sign of examining.

The first concerns Britain’s “open door policy”, which allowed Libyan exiles and British Libyan citizens, most of whom lived in Manchester, to join the 2011 uprising.

Some of these British Libyans had previously been under control orders, which subjected them to electronic tagging and required them to remain at a registered address for 16 hours a day.

Control orders are designed for the purpose of “protecting members of the public from a risk of terrorism”.

Yet in advance of the Libyan intervention, the British government had decided that the Manchester Libyans no longer posed a terrorist threat.

An article by Middle East Eye interviewed Libyans who claimed strings were pulled by Britain’s domestic security service, MI5, to allow them to travel to Libya and fight with “no questions asked”.

In other words, the UK was allowing individuals they suspected of involvement in terrorist activity to travel to Libya and join up with radical Islamist groups, including the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group.

Why were these control orders lifted and on whose advice? What caused the government to change its mind? Were the control orders lifted in connection with the Libyan conflict – or is there some other explanation?

Ministerial accountability

Saunders has the power to call then home secretary Theresa May and probably her immediate predecessor Alan Johnson and ask them. He should do so.

He also needs to call Cameron, the prime minister who ordered Britain’s military intervention in 2011. We need to know whether he was advised that domestic consequences might flow from his Libyan mission.

MI5 warned in advance about the danger of bloodshed on British streets as a result of the Iraq invasion. Was a similar warning issued in private ahead of British meddling in Libya?

The inquiry also needs to hear about Britain’s relations with the LIFG, which in the 1990s seems to have been in hock with MI6, and paid by the agency to carry out an assassination attempt against Gaddafi.

When their attempts at regime change failed, the Libyan radicals fled to Manchester – sometimes called the “second capital” of Libya.

After 9/11, the British state changed its approach and Gaddafi became an unexpected ally. Now, LIFG exiles in Britain were deprived of their passports.

In 2011 the LIFG came back into favour as Cameron ordered airstrikes and secretly deployed some ground troops to help local forces remove Gaddafi.

This has rarely been acknowledged. But General David Richards, then chief of the defence staff, told a parliamentary inquiry in 2016 that Britain “had a few people embedded” with rebel forces in Libya, saying that they were “in the rear areas” and “would go forward and back”.

Shouldn’t we be able to know more details about this? Who exactly did they work with? What support did they provide? Did it include armed support or training to Islamist forces?

These questions are supremely important since Abedi and his father were among those rebel forces at the time. I cannot establish whether they had been under control orders.

The questions are especially relevant because of the circumstances which applied during the British military action in Libya.

The terms of the United Nations resolution, which authorised British and French intervention, specifically prohibited sending in ground troops.

Britain mainly seems to have thrown our weight behind Islamist fighters, including the LIFG, who had a long-standing hatred of Gaddafi.

Some LIFG fighters in Libya in 2011 had earlier fought alongside the Islamic State of Iraq – the al-Qaeda entity which went on to establish a presence in Syria and then became Islamic State.

Put another way, Qaeda-connected forces were Britain’s boots on the ground in the war against Gaddafi.

In 2018, then foreign minister Alastair Burt admitted to parliament that the UK “likely” had contacts with “former members” of the LIFG and another Islamist group, the 17 February Martyrs Brigade, in Libya in 2011. What were these contacts?

Following the 2011 war, there are grounds for assuming that Abedi came into contact with other militant Islamist groups on his trips to Libya. There are suggestions, for example, that Abedi was trained in a camp complex run by Islamic State in Sabratha, near the border with Tunisia.

After the Gaddafi regime fell, Libya became a largely lawless country and a base for terrorism, including a launch pad for terrorist attacks in Europe.

We need to know what groups Abedi met, whether they trained him, and whether they were a danger to Britain.

And what were the true circumstances of Abedi being “rescued” by the British military in 2014, when he and other British citizens in Libya at the time were brought back to the UK. Why was Abedi allowed to return to Britain unhindered?

The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS, also known as MI6) should be able to shed light on this, making it frankly odd and absurd that no SIS officer seems to have been called to give evidence (an MI5 witness has been scheduled). Saunders’ inquiry will have limited credibility without SIS testimony.

What did they know about Abedi’s visits to Libya? Did SIS press for control orders to be relaxed? And the key question – what role did SIS play, exactly, in Libya in 2011?

Blood price?

Did innocent Manchester citizens pay a blood price for Britain’s cynical policy six years earlier? Was the British state itself ultimately part of the apparatus of terror which killed innocent people in Manchester?

This is why Saunders also needs to call William Hague, foreign secretary in 2011, to face forensic questioning about the relationship between the LIFG and the British state.

Did Hague understand what he was doing?

Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee later concluded he didn’t: “We have seen no evidence that the UK government carried out a proper analysis of the nature of the rebellion in Libya. It may be that the UK government was unable to analyse the nature of the rebellion in Libya due to incomplete intelligence and insufficient institutional insight”.

It added: “It failed to identify the militant Islamist extremist element in the rebellion.”

But was the Foreign Office really that naïve? Did Britain blindly stumble into an alliance with terrorist forces which might later turn on it? Or did we know exactly who we were getting involved with?

Since the hearings began in September, Saunders has spent three months interrogating the emergency services, and those responsible for Arena security. I have no doubt that there are important lessons to be learnt.

However, the purpose of the Manchester inquiry is to ensure a similar catastrophe can be averted in future. That’s why Saunders should spend at least the same amount of time interrogating British foreign policy.

There is no point in his inquiry unless it asks the difficult questions the British establishment would rather avoid, and look into the underlying causes.

Some might feel that this is unfair to Saunders. These questions would have been answered if there had been a formal inquiry, as there should have been, into Cameron’s calamitous decision to intervene in Libya.

In the absence of such an inquiry it’s up to Saunders. DM

Peter Oborne is a columnist for Middle East Eye. His new book – The Assault on Truth: Boris Johnson, Donald Trump and the Emergence of a New Moral Barbarism – will be published by Simon & Schuster in February. 

Featured image courtesy of Daily Maverick

Upon entering office on January 20, 2021, President-elect Joe Biden will have 16 days before the last remaining treaty limiting US and Russian nuclear arsenals, the 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), expires.

The treaty limits the two countries’ strategic nuclear arsenals to no more than 1,550 deployed warheads and 700 deployed missiles and heavy bombers each. The two countries met these limitations by the implementation deadline in 2018.

If the treaty expires on February 5, it will be the first time since 1972 that the United States and Russia would have no negotiated constraints on their strategic nuclear arsenals.

Fortunately, New START allows for an extension of up to five years so long as the US and Russian presidents both agree to it.

While Russia initially proposed a five-year extension with no preconditions in December 2019, the two countries exchanged dueling proposals in October 2020, pairing a one-year extension with a one-year freeze on all nuclear warheads. No deal ultimately came to fruition as Moscow rejected the additional US condition that the freeze be subject to verification measures.

Since the US presidential election, Russia has said that it would still be willing to extend New START by five years without any preconditions.

President-elect Biden has repeatedly expressed his support for an extension of New START. But there is uncertainty about how long of an extension he might pursue. His nominee for Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, suggested in November that a full five-year extension is on the table for the incoming administration, but more recent reports revealed debate among Biden’s advisors about whether to pursue a five-year extension or something shorter. There are also questions about what Biden might do with the warhead freeze concept that he stands to inherit from the Trump administration.

Below is a timeline that illustrates how the United States and Russia have landed here, chronicling each shift in both countries’ respective arms control negotiating positions. It demonstrates how the Trump administration largely delayed engagement with Russia on the future of New START for three and a half years and how, once it did engage, its actions raised questions about whether it genuinely wanted to secure an extension of the accord or was instead merely trying to run out the clock on the treaty.

The timeline helps paint a picture of the arms control situation the Biden administration will take charge of in January.

Click here to view timeline.

click screen below to view: important testimonies of medical doctors censored by Youtube and  Facebook

The opinions of prominent scientists who question the lockdown, the face-mask or social distancing are “taken down” by Google:

click screen below

click for Dr. Vernon

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Robert H. Jackson, US-amerikanischer Chefankläger im Nürnberger Prozess gegen die deutschen Hauptkriegsverbrecher im Zweiten Weltkrieg sagte in seiner Eröffnungsrede am 21. November 1945:

„…wir dürfen niemals vergessen, dass nach dem gleichen Maß, mit dem wir die Angeklagten heute messen, auch wir morgen von der Geschichte gemessen werden. Diesen Angeklagten einen vergifteten Becher reichen, bedeutet, ihn an unsere eigenen Lippen zu bringen.“ (1)

Am 24. Oktober 1946 schlug der Generalsekretär der Vereinten Nationen in einem mündlichen Bericht an die Volksversammlung vor, die Prinzipien, die in den insgesamt 13 Nürnberger Prozessen angewandt wurden, zu einem ständigen Teil des internationalen Rechts zu machen. Am 29. Juli 1950 formulierte die Völkerrechtskommission (International Law Commission ILC) ihre aus sieben Artikeln bestehende Fassung der Nürnberger Prinzipien. Sie waren Wegweiser für das neue Völkerstrafrecht:

1. „Jede Person, welche ein völkerrechtliches Verbrechen begeht, ist hierfür strafrechtlich verantwortlich.
2. Auch wenn das nationale Recht für ein völkerrechtliches Verbrechen keine Strafe androht, ist der Täter nach dem Völkerrecht strafbar.
3. Auch Staatsoberhäupter und Regierungsmitglieder sind für die von ihnen begangene völkerrechtliche Verbrechen verantwortlich.
4. Handeln auf höheren Befehl befreit nicht von völkerrechtlicher Verantwortlichkeit, sofern der Täter auch anders hätte handeln können.
5. Jeder, der wegen eines völkerrechtlichen Verbrechens angeklagt ist, hat Anspruch auf ein ordnungsgemäßes Verfahren.
6. Folgende Verbrechen sind als völkerrechtliche Verbrechen strafbar: a) Verbrechen gegen den Frieden b) Kriegsverbrechen c) Verbrechen gegen die Menschlichkeit.
7. Die Mittäterschaft zur Begehung der genannten Verbrechen stellt ebenfalls ein völkerrechtliches Verbrechen dar.“ (2)

Wann ist der nächste „Nürnberger Prozess“ fällig?

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Dr. Rudolf Hänsel ist Diplom-Psychologe und Erziehungswissenschaftler.

Noten

1. http://www.von-nuernberg-nach-den-haag.de/seite1/die_nuernberger_prinzipien/
2. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nürnberger_Prinzipien

COVID-19 is a cultural and institutional virus that eats away at the foundations of organized human action. The COVID19 campaign is best seen as a horrific coupling of two linked, but distinct, phenomena: the emergence of full-scale class warfare as a result of the rapid concentration of wealth over the past ten years and the transformation of artificial intelligence  (which lurks behind automation, drones, media and the internet) into the primary weapon in the ruthless battle of the super-rich against the vast majority of humanity.

A critical factor in the effectiveness of this combination of class warfare and information warfare has been the willingness of the vast majority of public intellectuals and other authority figures to go along with the current false narrative, actively misleading and distracting the general public.

As a result, few people understand what is going on in the United States behind the fear-mongering false reports in the news, with the exception of those at a high level who handle the classified planning, promulgation and enforcement of the COVID19 “great reset.”

An increasing number of people, however, are aware that something is profoundly wrong with the United States. Abandoned by a decadent establishment, they are forced to search for the truth in the trash produced by the corporate media, limited in their understanding by the primitive schemata for understanding economics and politics produced by consulting firms whose primary task is to frustrate understanding.

Class Warfare

A shift has taken place in American society over the last two years. The manipulation of digital currencies, bonds, derivatives and other financial products, combined with the radical privatization of the banking system has made it possible for a tiny handful of the super-rich, and the swarms of CEOs who buzz around them like flies, to create money out of nothing and to use that money to bribe everyone in a position of authority—or to threaten them.

This radical class fragmentation in American society has been festering for years, but it was only when the COVID19 crisis was hyped up as a means of calling attention away from the destruction of the economy resulting from the theft by super-rich of between 5 and 12 trillion dollars from the United States government through a series of loans to buy up stock, refinance and to transfer cash was successful. The rich decided that the time had come to implement their plan. .

The operation included a series of classified directives that forced all government officials, and many in media and academia, to lay all blame for the economic and political disruption on COVID19 and that prohibited the mention of this massive theft. This theft was the most important event of 2020 but was never mentioned in the US election.

Although this massive transfer of wealth dwarfed the quantitative easing scams of the last decade, and empowered a handful of multi-billionaires to run the economy without interference, their advisors warned them that such a move was extremely dangerous and that they must take ruthless measures to destroy all opposition before a truly revolutionary movement could get off the ground.

The term “class warfare” was popular in Marxist discourse and formed a central pillar of mass mobilization in the 1930s by communist movements. The term is not communist by nature, however. Today “class warfare” is not treated in a serious manner by the toothless left (who use the term as a colorful expression and not to describe this literal war). It is rather the far right that identifies the threat of class warfare, and describes it graphically, although not always in an accurate manner.

It is clear that the current plan, well underway, is intended to reduce the entire population to slavery under the control of the 0.01%. The the progressives and the flaccid left, however, refuse to grapple with this reality, and, with rare exceptions, they refuse to speak honestly about COVID19.

The best-known right-wing figure to describe class warfare was Alex Jones whose website was Info Wars and news broadcast “Prison Planet”.  Jones combined a systematic release of information about massive corporate and government conspiracies with trivia and some misleading material in a manner that allowed informed viewers to learn quite a bit. I suspect that he was forced to mix garbage in his reports because many of the materials he used were classified.

Today, Alex Jones has become a popular media figure in the Republican Party interested only in select crimes of the Democratic Party. There remain, however, plenty of other far right sources that are willing to take on the topic of class warfare.

The progressives, however, are allergic to any serious consideration of class warfare. Bernie Sanders will talk about the unfair or selfish actions of the 1% but he refuses to mention the systematic efforts of the 0.01% to destroy the economic, educational and cultural foundations of life for the majority of Americans. He never mentions the actions of Bill Gates, Elon Musk and Warren Buffett “progressive”-branded billionaires who are actively destroying the lives of citizens.

There are two critical components to the current strategy of class warfare.

First, the attacks are purposely audacious and extreme because it is assumed that this “shock and awe” approach will inhibit most intellectuals from engaging in a serious discussion or  engaging in political organization.

The “big lie” strategy is a core element in this campaign. Forcing government officials, academics and journalists to repeat obvious lies and to bombard the public with such lies quickly reduces the intellectual capacity of citizens to reflect on current events, and impedes collective action.

The scale of lie, of the deceit, is so massive that is seems like an unbelievable fairytale.

There have been any number of lies perpetrated by the super-rich since the Kennedy assassination, but the two big lies that form the core of the current ideological preparation for class warfare are the 9.11 incident and COVID19. It is likely that the same groups were involved in organizing and implementing both and that the key planners came from around the world, not simply from the United States, Saudi Arabia and Israel.

The best analogy for the planning of these two big lies is Agatha Christie’s detective novel “Murder on the Orient Express.” In that novel, the American gangster Cassetti is murdered on a train by a group of his rivals who agree in advance to sedate him and then each of them, in turn, stabs him once. The manner in which the implementation of the crime is shared makes the case difficult to crack. Because all the major players are involved at some level in the crime, they all are driven to support the false narrative and they all stand to face persecution, and a  loss of face, if that narrative is not maintained.

The manner in which America’s most famous public intellectuals stick to the 9.11 and COVID19 narratives, even in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence, suggests that a similar process is at work.

Those few stupid enough to demand an investigation of the facts in these cases have been punished. Those who have displayed leadership skills have been isolated or destroyed. The rest have been bought off with ego-flattering media coverage, with funds for superficial research, or with “entrepreneurial” business opportunities. All these rewards come with strings that render potential leaders harmless.

The other critical point to this preparation for full-spectrum class warfare can be found in the remarkable silence and calm before the storm. The media, academic experts, NGOs and global organizations like the United Nations, even the so-called radical left, give the public the impression that although there are serious problems in the United States, and the country is not as free as it could be, that, basically, things are normal.

Even as private militias roam the country, engaging in mayhem and killing, public intellectuals refuse to address the question of how Goldman Sachs and BlackRock manipulate the political process, or engage in domestic terrorism. The message repeated is that the situation will return to normal, perhaps under a Biden administration, is repeated ad nauseum until citizens have no choice but to embrace the fiction or lose the ability to interact with friends and family.

Citizens are encouraged by the media to take up meditation, spend time with family and read a book at a café. The implication of such advice, fed to us by corporate-sponsored self-help mavens, is that any tension our lives is the result of internal emotions, not of external forces.

There is a tendency in social animals like humans to try to define reality in response to social consensus, and to seek out traces of the normal in daily life, and to latch on to them as a means of avoiding the painful reality of radical political and economic shifts. The super-rich exploit this human weakness.

Thus, citizens are slowly dragged into a new reality of techno-totalitarian rule through a subtle dance, a gradual alternation between punctuated moments in which a feelings of danger and panic are encouraged cultivated and periods when citizens are told that things are slowly going back to normal. This melody that weaves between panic and relaxation without reflection means that citizens are convinced that they live in a normal society with occasional disruptions when in fact politics is becoming radically repressive with occasional moments of release.

This process is aided by efforts to frustrate understanding of who responsible for the crime.

The Left, groups like Socialist Equality Party (that run the WSWS report) or the Green Party, avoid any serious analysis of who owns what and how they own it. They speak of social justice, but they are silent (for the most part) about the specific machinations of Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and George Soros.

The far Right, by contrast, is willing to go after certain billionaires like Bill Gates and George Soros with the appropriate seriousness, but turns a blind eye to the billionaires Shelden Adelson, Robert Mercer and Charles Koch, the players who created the Trump phenomenon and have pushed for climate catastrophe and for a pro-Zionist policy.

The citizen is offered a baited gambit, a choice between

1) a right wing that addresses real class issues and describes massive conspiracies like the murderous vaccine regime that is being planned, but that is silent on climate change, and wants to end all government, and that does not provide a systemic analysis of the manner in which the Zionist and imperialist billionaires play a role in the destruction of our society, on the one hand and, on the other hand,

2) a “progressive” movement that promotes racial and ethnic diversity, talks about a more egalitarian society, makes plans for the response to climate change, but is silent on the crimes of the Super rich billionaires and turns a blind eye to the COVID19 scam.

The unsavory choice is not an accident. It is forced on us by the super-rich who have been advised that their only hope for survival is to use their extreme wealth to fool us into fighting each other rather than confronting them.

The advisors to the super-rich know that the concentration of wealth, and intentional impoverishment of the population, will reach a breaking point and citizens will start to organize. Their supercomputers have already presented them with detailed models for how revolutionary actions will unfold.

The super-rich want to steer those who see the criminal conspiracy, and the threat of world government for the few, towards the right which lacks the analytical framework to address class issues in a rigorous manner. That right wing is telling the truth, but the explanations for why do not include a systematic plan for reform. Instead, the right’s arguments fall back on simplistic narratives about threats from the Chinese Communist Party or from Jewish capital. Although there are, of course, serious financial conspiracies linked directly to China and to Israel, they are only part of the global integration of finance driven by AI that includes multiple players.

On the other hand, the super-rich want to steer those concerned with inequity and racism in society towards ineffective multiculturalism and feel-good ethnic identity rituals. The multiethnic new team of the Biden administration is typical of such identity politics. The ritual of appointing women, African Americans, Asians and Indians to prominent positions in government, business, the military, intelligence and academics signifies “progress” even if they are products of corporate finance and have deep stakes in private equity, or in the promotion of weapons systems.

The argument advanced by progressives is that there is no conspiracy but rather that the inequity we face is the product of  bad apples, of greedy and thoughtless men, who can be brought to their senses if they only have their photograph taken with Greta Thunberg.

Goldman Sachs could not be happier with the result.

As they say on the Upper Westside, “I like my fascism with a shot of progressive rhetoric and a thin layer of multicultural performance art on top.”

Consider how when Drew Faust retired as president of Harvard in 2018 she immediately joined the board of Goldman Sachs. There was total silence on the Left concerning this blatant conflict of interest. Harvard, once famous for the quality its research, is now valued primarily for its 50 Billion USD endowment, and not for its academic achievements. The endowment, and increasingly the faculty (who chase after corporate funding) have been reduced to the toys of investment banks.

Intellectuals who might serve as leaders are marginalized by policies that force them to write tedious papers for obscure journals. Those in the NGO world are forced to run around begging for donations from the rich and powerful and are therefore incapable of articulating a message with broad appeal. None of this is an accident.

The use of AI

A key weapon in the battle to the death between a tiny handful of the super-rich and the rest of humanity is AI, or artificial intelligence.

The threat of AI is a common theme touched upon by the attention-craving billionaire Elon Musk. But his warnings are abstract, about some future amorphous danger beyond the horizon, and not presented as a threat to us right now.

If anything, AI is hyped as an inevitable development in human civilization, and never presented as the political strategy of the rich to marginalize and destroy the majority of humanity. AI is presented to us as a boon for human potential that will boost creativity in a bid to distract and mislead the citizen. Youth are encouraged to learn computer science with the assumption that they will somehow find a place to work in this alien new economy without people.

Artificial Intelligence is capable of analyzing massive amounts of information and coming up with aggregate conclusions. AI is used to test airplanes in flight simulations, to model chemical reactions in organic compounds and to explore other complex phenomenon such as weather, or ocean currents.

But these are not the concerns that corporations think about when they invest billions in supercomputers.

AI has two fundamental uses today.

1) The calculation of potential profit from stock, bonds and other derivatives and the formulation of, and implementation of, strategies for maximizing that profit. In many cases, the supercomputers not only calculate the value of derivatives, they create those derivatives and thus create value out of nothing by alchemy.

2) The large-scale manipulation of the Earth’s population, starting with the United States, through a complex symphonic presentation of narratives in different gendres that serves to, in alternation, frighten and intimidate, cajole and berate, encourage and reassure, the population. These patterns of stimulation aimed at social manipulation take place locally, nationally and globally and they unfold on such a large scale, and with such complexity that, unless you are involved in the plan, you will have trouble keeping up, and you will join the billions of people persuaded by these AI coordinated campaigns to engage in acts, or support policies, that are not in the interest of anyone but a tiny handful of billionaires.

The propagandistic role of AI is perhaps one of the most poorly understood threats that mankind faces. That is not an accident.

The next stage of brutal class warfare will be starting soon, and as the vast majority of humanity is forced into poverty, and revolutionary action no longer seems unthinkable, we can be sure that AI will take on an aggressive new role in manipulating the thinking of citizens.

It is true that there is tremendous competition between China, Japan, the United States, Germany, Russia, Israel and other countries to develop the next generation of super computers as quickly as possible. The details of this competition, however, are classified (or subject to non-disclosure agreements). Most information released in the media is intentionally misleading.

The competition between nations to develop AI is increasingly secondary to the competition between corporations, or even between individual billionaires, to set up banks of  supercomputers that enable them to engage in the calculation of profit, and the manipulation of the public, for themselves.

National boundaries are not important in the competition.

The popular rhetoric of a “new Cold War” between China and the United States is used to obscure the degree of cooperation in the calculation of profit between Google and Tencent, between Microsoft and Alibaba. How much cooperation in supercomputing takes place? I doubt anyone really knows. What we know is that super-rich in both the United States and China have a similar interest in preempting any effort to organize opposition.

We know from the case of the First World War that it is possible to wage a brutal total war while the cooperation at a higher level between financial oligarchs continued.

The nature of AI warfare is unlikely to be a Pearl Harbor-like attack on the United States by a nation state like China or Russia, but rather the systematic manipulation of all the citizens of the world that grinds them down and disempowers them economically and intellectually.

How is AI used in war

The capacity of AI is understated in the media intentionally. The application of AI in business is to create algorithms for the manipulation of the information culled from surveillance and transmissions that assure that almost no citizens are aware of how the information collected is used against them. It is not that hard for supercomputers to outsmart and trick entire populations, especially if those populations are engrossed in playing video games, watching pornography or wasting their time on images of food or fashion.

The primary directive in this information war is that it must be conducted in a friendly and sensitive manner so that almost no one grasps what is taking place until they are locked up permanently in their homes.

Extremely detailed information about all aspects of the lives of most humans on the Earth is already available and programs exist that calculate possible responses to future changes on the part of individuals, groups, nations and the entire world. The detail of the information available, and the ability to calculate responses at multiple levels, grows increasingly sophisticated.

We can assume that there is a core group of say five million people globally who are carefully tracked and whose actions are anticipated because they are potential political leaders or opinion makers. At the same time, all significant groups (leftists of different flavors, Christian or libertarian conservatives, Jews, African Americans, or Hispanics) are tracked individually, in small groups and in aggregate and projections for their responses to political shifts are calculated.

Each individual, and each population group, is targeted and then slowly frightened, and/or seduced, into accepting dangerous shifts in governance (for businesses, schools, NGOs and local, state and federal government) through a complex back and forth, an alternation of rewards and punishments, the creation of moments of crisis and uncertainty.

Those who find Fox News convincing require different presentations of information from those who read the Washington Post or the Atlantic, and also different approaches are required for those who read the New York Review of Books or Common Dreams. The arguments advanced are subtly varied with the help of AI computations of the fluid state of public opinion with minute attention to each small audience.

The citizen gets the impression from this calibrated process that politics are a steady state, alternating between crisis and progress. The reality, however, is that society is becoming rapidly more authoritarian, serving as a tool for multinational corporations.

These algorithms determine what news stories, or dramas and commercials, should be placed in which media sources, over what period of time so as to modify behavior and thinking patterns for each population group (Chinese Americans interested in science, conservative Christians invested in real estate, African Americans interested to sports). Because the messaging is spread out in waves over months and years. The process resembles it is like drawings of birds in the Peruvian Nazca desert that are only visible from the sky and not to people on the ground. Even the smartest mind at MIT is unable to perceive the patterns for manipulation that have been worked out by supercomputers.

Several steps had to be taken before this program of information warfare could be launched. First, all scientists employing the scientific method were removed from the public discussion concerning COVID19 and authority figures like Anthony Fauci a man who senselessly calls for the universal use of masks, for social distancing and for vaccines, had to be held up by the media, including the progressives, as a model for science in opposition to the anti-science Trump. That required them to completely overlook how Bill Gates created Fauci as a corporate hack to push his for-profit healthcare agenda.

Once a stake was driven through the heart of the scientific method, it was then possible to manipulate this pandemic so as to advance the interests of financial elites.

A perfect example of the weaponization of the left for this covert war on science is the call for mobilization by 314 Action, an “NGO” that describes itself as a grassroots movement to “elect Democratic scientists who will use science and facts to address some of our most pressing issues like climate change and health care.”

The post describes the “incredible work” of Rebekah Jones, an expert who created a COVID database. She was fired, the post tells us, for refusing to follow orders from the Republican governor to “manipulate and falsify COVID numbers to downplay the number of cases and infections.”

Therefore, the posting declares, we should support a “COVID whistleblower being targeted ruthlessly.” But what if the entire COVID data was itself a fraud and what if the Republican governor is the one who is standing on the side of science?

The strategists behind this post are assuming that those accustomed to “progressive” politics will not be able to wrap their mind around such a scenario and will thus be seduced into embracing an anti-science agenda in the name of science.

The media today is filled with screaming articles peppered with scary photographs of people being carted away wrapped up in plastic in a blatant effort at systematic fear mongering. Many of those photographs, and the content, are most likely fabricated.

New statistics for how many people have become infected by COVID19 in each city or state are plastered everywhere in a manner that displaces all real news. None of the information about outbreaks, about treatment, about vaccines, or anything else is reliable or even believable.

That is to say that all aspects of journalism have been fully weaponized. Behind the headlines, supercomputers alternate stories of dramatic outbreaks and lulls in COVID 19 cases, breakthroughs and setbacks in developing vaccines. We read about experts who suggest there is hope just around the corner and then about others who foresee a “dark winter.”  The process makes sure that all debate is about process and personalities, not the fundamental question of why. The corporate media focuses on the personality of Trump or Biden, or on the weather, or on just about anything other than an analysis of what is taking place.

This AI driven information warfare is best seen as the equivalent of a game of chess, or “go.” The supercomputers owned by Goldman Sachs, or by Jeff Bezos, work to calibrate precisely how to lull to sleep, or how to disorient and shock, individuals and specific population groups over months so that they will accept as normal an increasingly alien landscape.

The privatization of the control of information in government is also part of information warfare.

Imagine my surprise when a friend forwarded to me a job listing for “senior intelligence analyst for North Korea” at Microsoft. The trend of taking intelligence positions out of the government and giving them to private companies has increased over the last twenty years and reached a peak over the last year.

Multinational corporations, accountable to no one, can’t wait to drive the final nail in the coffin of government so that they can regulate all aspects of daily life for citizens in a reign of terror while using the innocuous term “service” to describe the process.

It was announced on November 21 that the CIA will give a massive cloud computing contract worth “tens of billions” to Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, IBM and Oracle. Perhaps it would be better to simply say that the CIA will be split up into the fiefdoms of Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Larry Page, and Larry Ellison. And that is just the part that actually appears in the newspaper.

Strategies for manipulation

Data by itself is not so helpful. It must be combined with a strategy for manipulation. The current strategy can be traced back to the public relations and advertising strategies of corporations and government developed in the 1950s based on the principles of Sigmund Freud’s disciple Edward Bernays. Bernays developed concrete methods to manipulate the public through powerful images and simplistic slogans. He saw humans as irrational and inclined to seek out safe interpretations of events when they are presented by authority figures in accord with a “herd instinct.”

His classic books “Propaganda” (1928) and “The Engineering of Consent” (1955) form how-to manuals for political control.

More recently, there was a dramatic shift in public discourse after the 9/11 incident that demolished rational and scientific thinking from left to right, from comic books to scientific journals. A horrific monster, spawned by the stimulation of instinct and of reactive thinking by technology, emerged to take the place of science in our society.

How anybody could think that the crash of two airplanes could cause three buildings constructed out of reinforced steel to collapse into dust is beyond my understanding.

Yet the American public was subject to a long line of experts who said it happened like that and the icons of the supposed “radical left” like Chris Hedges and Noam Chomsky were trotted out to convince us that this fairytale was beyond question.

Another important part of the preparation for class warfare can be traced back to classified programs for psychological manipulation that were undertaken by the CIA and other organizations. As far back as the 1960s, programs to employ drugs, isolation, and other forms of invasive stimulation (or sensory deprivation) as a means to modify behavior and thinking were undertaken with corporate backing.

It was the programs run at Guantanamo Bay after 9/11 to destroy the minds of prisoners using isolation, mind-altering drugs, masks and sadistic abuse (described in the book “Murder at Camp Delta” by a former guard Joseph Hickman) that directly inform current strategies for mass control. Such programs had nothing to do with gathering “intelligence.”

I do not have access to the results of those experiments, but I can speculate as to what they were trying to determine. There are distinct flaws in the structure of the brain that make it possible to manipulate people without their knowledge or consent and those experiments helped to refine the specific methods.

The central weakness in the human mind derives from the contest for control between the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala. The prefrontal cortex makes decisions based on the rational analysis of the environment and a sophisticated calculation of the current situation in coordination with other parts of the brain. The amygdala, however, responds to threats with a sudden and irrational drive to flight, or to fight, that is not rational (and can be highly destructive). Although the amygdala traditionally played a critical role in allowing the human to drop everything and pursue self-preservation, its ability to override the decisions of the prefrontal cortex offers the manipulator a tremendous opportunity.

The results of the torture programs at Guantanamo Bay, combined with the work of Bernays’s modern disciples, provide the basis for sophisticated strategies to stimulate the amygdala so that its compulsive response and short-term irrationality overrides the prefrontal cortex. In addition, the pleasure centers (sexual arousal, appeals of food, or of other sensual pleasures) also help this campaign by inhibiting long-term rational planning in the individual and reinforcing an anti-intellectual agenda. This “softening up” operation is carried out in a slow and methodical manner globally to prepare for the next step in the conflict.

In effect, highly educated and capable people are rendered harmless and passive through this process. The promotion of media and educational content full of advanced vocabulary but lacking logical argumentation, serves to lull the educated American to sleep. One need only read the Nation or the American Prospect to see the level of linguistic sophistication employed in articles that are mind-numbing and completely inaccurate in their description of reality.

The result of this process has been the founding of a nation of “sleepwalkers,” to borrow the title from the novel by the Austrian author Hermann Broch. Broch describes in that novel (1932) how educated Germans allowed themselves to be led into the catastrophe of World War One with eyes wide open. German intellectuals became sleepwalkers in the sense that they were functional in society, sophisticated in carrying out their jobs, even appreciative of music and art, but completely oblivious to the signs of institutional and cultural collapse. The current class-warfare strategy encourages such behavior.

The next stage in this horrific combination of information and class warfare may be launched by the COVID19 Task Force appointed by president-elect Joe Biden. Headed by Vivek Murthy (former surgeon general), David Kessler (former commissioner at the FDA) and Marcella Nunez-Smith (Yale Professor) the task force is positioned to play the role of judge, jury and executioner in the pursuit of a response to COVID19 that has no legal limits. Any scientific mandate is ruled out from the start because the virus itself is bogus. Biden’s statement that “I will spare no effort, none, or any commitment to end this pandemic” suggests that the door is open to massive repression of freedom of action and expression.

Biden vowed to establish a “pandemic testing board” modeled on the Wartime Production Panel of the Second World War and to empower the Federal government to fight COVID19 with the full authority of the Defense Production Act of the Korean War. The analogies to military mobilization to describe tracking down people supposedly suffering from COVID19, and their treatment with hundreds of millions of mandatory vaccines, is not random.

Biden demands a national “mask mandate” that will force everyone to wear these masks 24/7. Such a move cannot be seen as a misunderstanding of medicine. It is a deliberate effort to force government officials, corporations and citizens to accept orders even if they have no logical or scientific basis.

The closest parallel to the mask mandate is the demand in Germany that everyone of Jewish ancestry wear a yellow star starting on September 1, 1941. This policy, which had no basis in science, was accepted by the vast majority of intellectuals and opinion makers of the time and it served to create distance between populations, to encourage hostility, and to accustom citizens to non-sensical and authoritarian policy. After a year of watching some Germans forced to wear yellow stars of the first time in history, it was easy for the population to play stupid when those people were sent off to settlements in Poland and never returned.

Similarly, we can imagine that Americas will be prepared to accept the development of corona camps for groups of thousands, or millions, who are suddenly reported to be suffering from this disease. Citizens fearing that they themselves may be subject to treatment will have no choice but to wear “smart masks” or to have CCTV cameras placed in their homes, or to be subject to any number of mandatory vaccines that allow corporations (posing as “government”) to inject into their bodies with poorly understood substances and sensors.

That is the frightening prospect that confronts us today.

The historian Hannah Arendt got it right when she wrote,

“Evil comes from a failure to think. It defies thought for as soon as thought tries to engage itself with evil and examine the premises and principles from which it originates, it is frustrated because it finds nothing there. That is the banality of evil.”

AI is being used promote a “failure to think” at “warp speed” that will serve a critical role in inhibiting resistance in the next stage of class warfare.

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Emanuel Pastreich was an Independent Candidate for US President.

Featured image: Public domain image from Wiki’s COVID-Protest page.

This Project Censored Review by Prof. Nolan Higdon and Michael Smith on the H1N1 “pandemic” and vaccine scandal was originally published in 2010 following the 2009 H1N1 virus outbreak.

Below is the link to Michel Chossudovsky‘s detailed article which was granted the 2010-2011 Project Censored Award (recently reposted on Global Research).  

Michel Chossudovsky, “The H1N1 Swine Flu Pandemic: Manipulating the Data to Justify a Worldwide Public Health Emergency,” Global Research, August 25, 2009

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The H1N1 virus has spawned widespread panic and fear throughout the world. However, upon closer examination, many of the claims made by the World Health Organization (WHO) seem to be based on weak and incomplete data. The Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has created and used data to grossly exaggerate the need for an expensive and unnecessary vaccine aimed at creating profits for the pharmaceutical industry—not protecting Americans.

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The WHO claimed that a worldwide public health emergency had unfolded on an unprecedented scale in 2009, and 4.9 billion doses of H1N1 swine flu vaccine were needed to stop the spread. Very soon thereafter countries all around the globe began preparation for the inoculation of millions of people in accordance with WHO recommendations. In some countries the WHO recommended that the H1N1 vaccination be mandatory. However, most people were unaware that the data used by the WHO was faulty at best.

In the US, both federal and state governments began preparation for the pandemic. State governments are generally responsible for these preparations, in coordination with federal agencies. President Obama’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology released a report that “considered the H1N1 pandemic ‘a serious health threat’ to the US—not as serious as the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic but worse than the swine flu outbreak of 1976.” Responding to such terrifying language, Massachusetts’s legislation introduced hefty fines and prison sentences for those who refused to be vaccinated. The US military was expected to have an active role in this health emergency.

There was no uniform system for collecting data on suspected swine flu victims in the US, which led to confusion in the absence of accurate statistics. The CDC acknowledged that the figures being collected on “confirmed and probable cases” in the US contained no separation between “confirmed” and “probable.” In fact, only a small percentage of the reported cases were “confirmed” by laboratory tests. This faulty data and much more like it from around the globe was given to the WHO, who in turn used the numbers to justify a pandemic.

The need for a perfected method of diagnosing and counting infected people was demonstrated when the WHO’s “data” caused a wave of inaccurate conclusions as to the severity of the flu and the distance it had spread.

The WHO declared a Phase 4 level of severity on April 27. Just two days later (April 29), without corroborating evidence, the pandemic was raised to Phase 5. Just over a month later (June 11) it was raised again to Phase 6, the level of an actual pandemic. The abrupt change in numbers should have been a wake-up call to the WHO that something had gone wrong in its data collection. Yet despite the suspicious changes, there was no attempt to improve the process of data collection in terms of laboratory confirmation. In fact quite the opposite occurred. Following the Phase 6 pandemic announcement, the CDC decided that data collection of individual confirmed and probable cases was no longer necessary to determine the spread of swine flu. The WHO ignored the change in data collection and that same month predicted with authority that “as many as 2 billion people could become infected over the next two years—nearly one-third of the world population.” The report created an atmosphere of fear and insecurity.

By August 2009, the WHO casually acknowledged that the underlying symptoms were moderate and that “most people will recover from swine flu within a week, just as they would from seasonal forms of influenza.”

The inaccurate data collection exaggerated numbers of infected people due to the CDC’s quantitative model created in July 2009. From April 15 to July 24, 2009, states reported a total of 43,771 confirmed and probable cases of novel influenza A (H1N1) infection. Of these reported cases, 5,011 people were hospitalized and 302 died.

On July 24, 2009, counts were discontinued by the CDC. Instead of collecting data that could have provided empirical backing for assessments of how the H1N1 virus was spreading, the CDC announced that it had developed its model to determine the true number of novel H1N1 flu cases in the United States.

The CDC further stated, “The model took the number of cases reported by states and adjusted the figure to account for known sources of underestimation,” such as accounting for people who never reported their illness, despite no proof that these infected people existed. These estimations caused an inaccurate and basically made-up figure of infections. The CDC recognized early in the outbreak that, once the disease was widespread, it would be more valuable to transition to standard surveillance systems to monitor illness, hospitalizations, and deaths.

The CDC’s data was then used to justify massive vaccinations, which created huge profits for the pharmaceutical industry. The CDC posits that the data sent to them by the states is “underestimated.” The CDC then inflates figures of “unconfirmed” cases, many of which are cases of seasonal influenza. The “corrected figures” are then inserted into the model. Using the CDC model approach, it is estimated that more than one million people became ill with novel H1N1 flu between April and June 2009 in the United States. Since these estimates are not based on confirmed illness, the numbers can grow and shrink at the whim of those controlling the model. The CDC’s model simulations and predictions of the spread of H1N1 swine flu are then used to plan the implementation of a nationwide vaccination program. Based on the model’s “predictions,” mass vaccination of half of the US population is required, with the possible provision for quarantines under civilian and/or military jurisdiction.

According to reports, the US government expected to have 85 million doses of the vaccine by the end of October 2009. The US government had ordered 195 million doses from the pharmaceutical companies. On July 29, 2009, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP)—an advisory committee to the CDC—recommended that novel H1N1 flu vaccine be made available first to priority groups; these groups together would equal approximately 159 million individuals. The Agence France-Presse reported that the United States put in orders for the vaccine that would cover between 30 and 78 percent of Americans. As a result, the pharmaceutical industry gained massive profits from Americans who purchased an unnecessary and potentially dangerous vaccine in large quantities.

It is essential that physicians, epidemiologists, and health workers speak out through their respective associations and refute the government officials who are acting on behalf of the pharmaceutical industry, as well as denounce the manipulation of data. An accurate method of counting infected people has to be created in time for the next pandemic, should one hit, in order to better serve the needs of the public. It is also important to warn the public on the dangers of untested H1N1 flu vaccines. The WHO cannot accurately serve the people it claims to serve without the cooperation of groups like the CDC. Sadly, the CDC is not protecting humanity because it is too busy expanding the bottom line of the pharmaceutical industry.

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Source

Michel Chossudovsky, “The H1N1 Swine Flu Pandemic: Manipulating the Data to Justify a Worldwide Public Health Emergency,” Global Research, August 25, 2009, http://www.globalresearch.ca/PrintArticle.php?articleId=14901

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“With wrongs yet legal, curse a future age!
Still spread, fair Liberty! thy heav’nly wings,
Breath plenty on the fields, and fragrance on the springs.”
Windsor Forest, Alexander Pope, 1713

The UK government has introduced a parliamentary Bill that seeks to give the police and a host of other organisations a power to authorise informants to participate in criminal conduct. The government claims that the Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Bill [1] will create a legal way to break the law – in other words, to use the law to break the law.

The Bill is the government’s response to the legal challenge from Privacy International, Reprieve, the Committee on the Administration of Justice and the Pat Finucan Centre, who challenged the existing policy of authorising criminal conduct by officials and agents of the security services [2].

The government has also published a handy Home Office European Convention on Human Rights Memorandum [3] that explains how and why they believe that such law breaking is compatible with the Human Rights Convention. The memorandum says:

“A criminal conduct authorisation may only be granted where that conduct is believed to be necessary and proportionate in the interests of national security, for the purpose of preventing or detecting crime or disorder, or in the interests of the economic well-being of the UK for certain statutory purposes and where it is proportionate to what is sought to be achieved by that conduct.”

At first glance it may seem as if there might be some safeguards buried in such an obtuse statement. In fact the Home Office are using the language of war, language that comes from international law, that has come to dominate modern political discourse and is being used to facilitate the introduction of totalitarian measures. It may seem like our system is suddenly falling apart. In fact the building (or rather destruction) blocks were put in place quite some time ago.

To get an understanding of how this situation has come about and of the above quoted memorandum we need to look at the language used in the laws of war and see how it has made its way into the language of freedoms via the bait and switch of the language of “rights”. And to do this first we must address the murky heritage of two words at the heart of modern discourse on freedoms and police actions – “proportionate” and “necessary”.

The Caroline Incident

Back in 1837 Canada was made up of two British colonies (Upper and Lower Canada) run by an oligarchy of wealthy men. In December of that year a Scotsman, William Lyon Mackenzie planned a revolt in Upper Canada to try and institute political reforms [4]. Mackenzie and his men took over Navy Island in the Niagara river and proclaimed the Republic of Canada there. The rebels had a few stolen cannons which they used to fire at mainland Canada. The British were none too happy and asked the United States Government to stop the rebels, who were allegedly amassing weapons and new recruits in the US.

The rebels had hired a steamboat, the Caroline, to transport men and supplies from New York to Navy Island. On the evening of 29th December 1837, whilst the Caroline was docked at Schlosser in New York, a Royal Navy boat with 60 men rowed across the Niagra river and attacked the steamboat. The Caroline was seized, towed to Niagra Falls and set ablaze, killing two members of the crew.

The Caroline was a United States boat moored in the United States and so this act was seen as an unprovoked attack on a neutral state. The US Secretary of State John Forsyth wrote a letter to Henry Fox, the British minister in Washington stating that the incident would be made “the subject of a demand for redress.” Fox replied that Britain had acted under “the necessity of self-defence and self-preservation”. Through an exchange of letters between Forsyth, his successor Daniel Webster, Fox and Lord Ashburton, a political excuse was transformed into a legal doctrine- the Caroline doctrine [5] – the legacy of which would have far reaching consequences.

The key elements of the doctrine as penned by Webster are:

i) “It will be for [the British] government to show a necessity of self-defense,
instant, overwhelming, leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation.”

ii) “It will be for [the British government] to show, also, that… [it] did nothing unreasonable or excessive; since the act, justified by the necessity of self-defense, must be limited by that necessity, and kept clearly within it.” [6]

International Law

In the years following the Caroline incident there were calls for the creation of an organisation to act as an arbitrator for disputes between nations, a role that interestingly had been undertaken by the Pope [7]. These calls would eventually lead to the formation of the League of Nations and the United Nations. In the meantime a number of law societies formed, such as the Association for the Reform and Codification of the Law of Nations (1873) [8} concerning themselves with the new and controversial area of law, “international law” as it came to be known. In 1888 the British Prime Minister Lord Salisbury said of this new “international law” that it “has not any existence in the sense in which the term ‘law’ is usually understood” [9] – but they didn’t let a small thing like that hold them back.

From the Caroline doctrine then came the core concepts in international law relating to the self-defence of states – “necessity” and “proportionality”. These concepts recur frequently in international treaties and in the ongoing work of the United Nations’ International Law Commission (ILC) [10] to codify international law.

The ILC tweaked the “necessity of self-defence” by adding a requirement for an “essential interest”, so that states cannot invoke necessity with regards to an act unless the act:

is the only means for the State to safeguard an essential interest against a grave and imminent peril [11]

Article 51 of the United Nations Charter acknowledges a State’s right to self defence when it states that: “Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations” [12].

The inclusion of this clause in the Charter acknowledges and codifies what was used as a legal excuse into the law of war.

In the nineteenth century, whilst this new language was being created for international law, domestically in England the same words were being used very differently.

1878 Royal Commission to consider the Laws Relating to Indictable Offences

In 1878 a Royal Commission was appointed in England to scrutinise the Criminal Code (Indictable Offences) Bill, an attempt by barrister and civil servant James Fitzjames Stephen to convert the unwritten English criminal law into statute law (i.e. codifying it). In their report the commission described what most people would probably understand as a definition of self-defence:

“We take one great principle of the common law to be, that though it sanctions the defence of a man’s person, liberty, and property against illegal violence, and permits the use of force to prevent crimes, to preserve the public peace, and to bring offenders to justice, yet all this is subject to the restriction that the force used is necessary ; that is, that the mischief sought to be prevented, could not be prevented by less violent means; and that the mischief done by, or which might reasonably be anticipated from the force used is not disproportioned to the injury or mischief which it is intended to prevent.” [13]

So although the words “necessary” and “proportionate” were not considered by many to be features of the English legal system, the words were used in the language of individual self-defence.

Just to add a little more confusion to the issue, the British jurist A.V.Dicey, commenting on the above quoted section of the 1879 report, referred to this definition of self-defence as “the doctrine of the legitimacy of necessary and reasonable force” [14]. This introduces the English legal principle of “reasonableness” which was the primary tool used in judicial review cases (cases that challenge government decisions). In the English legal system the terms “reasonable” and “proportionate” have meant the same thing [15]. And the idea of reasonableness relates to the view of an ordinary and reasonable person generally known as the man on the Clapham omnibus.

Dicey noted that the use of the word “necessary” in the 1879 report is “somewhat peculiar, since it includes the idea both of necessity and of reasonableness”. This peculiarity of circular definitions would become a recurring feature of the reframed “necessary” and “proportionate” in the modern era.

More recently the doctrine of individual self-defence has been codified in English statute law (the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act2008) where the definition rather unhelpfully uses both reasonableness and proportionality [16].

Crucially the use of “necessity” can be tracked back even further and I’ll return to this later.

Human Rights and the language of war

So how does all of this relate to freedoms and police actions? The answer lies in the European Convention on Human Rights, which was drafted in the aftermath of the second world war. At a series of meetings from 1947, the Movement for European Unity discussed the idea of a Charter of Human Rights [17]. The stated aim was that countries in Europe would sign up to a set of broad minimum principles of human rights and if a country fell into totalitarianism, as had Nazi Germany in the 1930s, then they could be challenged in an international court under a breach of the Charter.

The Charter was drafted in Strasbourg by representatives of eleven different countries [18]. As the proposal progressed a right of individual petition was also added to the Charter, as an optional clause, allowing individuals as well as governments to take cases to the court.

The Charter proposed a right to life, prohibition of torture, prohibition of slavery, a right to liberty and security, right to a fair trial, a requirement for no punishment without breach of a law, a right to respect for private and family life, a right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, a right to freedom of expression, a right to freedom of assembly and a right to marry.

The original privacy right (respect for private and family life) read as follows:

freedom from all arbitrary interferences in private and family life, home and correspondence, in accordance with Article 12 of the United Nations Declaration. [19]

According to British cabinet papers, the UK did not see any need for a privacy right, but as other delegates did, the UK delegation did all they could to limit it and so drafted a number of permitted restrictions . This meant that the original privacy article of the Charter, after having “hurriedly to find a better text”, became:

1. Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence.

And was then restricted or “qualified” by an additional paragraph:

2. There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic wellbeing of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.

This qualification paragraph, which was also used in other rights, takes some unpicking but the key point to understand is the use of a necessity clause, that of the so-called “democratic necessity” buried in the phrase “necessary in a democratic society”. Also note the list of essential interests detailed under “democratic necessity”. Compare this with the language used in the necessity clause of the war-time 1939 Emergency Powers Act [20]:

Subject to the provisions of this section, His Majesty may by Order in Council make such Regulations (in this Act referred to as “Defence Regulations “) as appear to him to be necessary or expedient for securing the public safety, the defence of the realm, the maintenance of public order and the efficient prosecution of any war in which His Majesty may be engaged, and for maintaining supplies and services essential to the life of the community.

This so-called “necessity of state” looks remarkably similar to the “democratic necessity” of the European Charter and the reason for this similarity becomes clearer when the origins of necessity clauses is explored.

The use of necessity can be tracked back to canon law in medieval times and the Latin phrase “necessitas legem non habet” – necessity knows no law [21]. Its original use related to a way of individuals being excused from the harshness of religious law when acting out of good faith e.g eating someone else’s food to ward off hunger. So it was an individual’s self defence against religious law.

Over time however states began using necessity for their own ends, switching its application to justify the state doing whatever it felt was required for self-preservation – “necessity of state”. Thus it became a self defence for states and became a legal concept used to switch off the law to protect some “essential interest” of the state. The state of emergency or state of exception used to justify war time powers is the prime example of the use of this “necessity of state”. International law has been built on the foundations of the self defence of states and this has been achieved by re-working the language used to describe individual self-defence.

Therein lies the problem when these words are used in the language of rights. When an individual’s right is interfered with by the state it would seem that the state is the attacker and the individual whose rights are being interfered with is the injured party. But international law has been constructed by states to protect the interests of the state, and so the state is afforded the legal concepts related to self-defence. This means that the individual and the rights of the individual are seen as the attacker and the state and the interests of the state are seen as the defender. So the state can use necessity as a defence for its attack on an individual’s right and can use proportionality (explored more below) to defend the severity of the attack.

This topsy-turvy use of self-defence is key to understanding the rigged legal casino of international law and the Human Rights agenda that has been attached to it. Once this construct has been unpicked it becomes clearer why the allied powers immediately after World War Two were so keen to introduce international human rights treaties and why those treaties were constructed by committees of politicians and bureaucrats rather than the real people who were supposedly going to be the beneficiaries. In the hands of state actors the language of rights became the language of war and the individual became the enemy.

When World War Two ended in 1945 the UK government was not keen to restore the freedoms restricted under the 1939 Emergency Powers Act. In fact the Act was not repealed until 1959. Similarly the 1939 National Registration Act that introduced compulsory ID cards was not repealed until 1952 [22]. It now becomes clear that the 1950 European Rights Charter was constructed to embody the same spirit of restricting freedoms to safeguard state interests.

The right to privacy and other rights in the European Charter were restricted at the outset via the “democratic necessity” clause. This was not formally defined in the Charter but over time proceedings of the international court fleshed out some details, such as the requirement for a “pressing social need” when using democratic necessity as a defence for restricting rights, akin to the “essential interest” requirement in the laws of war.

Attaching a necessity clause to the right as a qualification in this way meant that the right itself defines large areas where it can be removed. This is a perverse turn of events particularly for a common law country like England, where the custom was that people are free to do anything not explicitly restricted. Traditionally rights were described more clearly as “residual rights” that emerge in the gaps between restrictions created by the state. With the European Charter of Human Rights, English statesmen were instrumental in the drafting of a charter that restricted freedoms in the name of granting rights.

Ratification of the European Convention

The Charter was agreed to and opened for signature in 1950. The United Kingdom was the first country to ratify it in 1951 [23].

In 1966 the UK government agreed to allow individuals to petition the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg and by the late ‘60s there were calls to incorporate the European Convention into UK law so that individuals could bring cases in the UK courts rather than having to go to Strasbourg.

In 1977 a select committee of the House of Lords conducted an inquiry into enacting a Bill of Rights incorporating the European Convention rights.

By this time the European Court in Strasbourg had heard a number of cases and several doctrines or principles used in their deliberations had become established. One such doctrine was the “margin of appreciation”. Stay with me.

The margin of appreciation

This doctrine basically amounts to a very generous benefit of the doubt or discretionary authority – a way of strengthening the “self-defence” necessity clause used by states. The logic used by the Court to explain this benefit of the doubt was that as the Convention applies to a number of countries with varying cultures and social attitudes, the Court should allow for these cultural differences by only applying minimum standards [24].

Lawyer and then Governor of the British Institute of Human Rights, Cedric Thornberry expressed to the 1977 House of Lords Committee the dangers of incorporating the European Convention into UK domestic law:

I can, of course, see many reasons why the Government should prefer the enactment of the European Convention; it would probably be the principal beneficiary. A much wider area of administrative discretion than it presently enjoys would be legitimised by such enactment. But the law of human rights is not about the protection of persecuted governments. And in the attainment of such human rights there are no easy ways forward and certainly no easy answers. To paraphrase Pericles:—the attainment of human rights requires both courage and virtue [25].

Thornberry went on to warn that enacting the Convention “could not but set back the cause of human rights in this country, considered overall”. But alas Thornberry’s warnings were not heeded and in 1998 the European Convention was incorporated into UK law via the Human Rights Act.

So a rights charter, written by a committee of bureaucrats, severely restricted by the insertion of a “necessity” clause along with a wide area of administrative discretion, became the defence for British freedoms.

Not great, but things were about to get even worse.

The decisions of the European Court had introduced that familiar sounding doctrine, or more precisely two doctrines of “proportionality” and “necessity”, which are the reason for this meander through history in search of the heritage of the words “proportionate” and “necessary”. Hang in there, we’re getting closer.

So, we have explored the foundations of necessity, now let’s look at the Strasbourg court’s definition and then look at what proportionality is.

The European Court in Strasbourg defined the word “necessary” as applied in the “democratic necessity” test in a 1976 case relating to an Obscene Publications Act prosecution in the UK as follows:

whilst the adjective “necessary” [..] is not synonymous with “indispensable” [..], neither has it the flexibility of such expressions as “admissible”, “ordinary” [..], “useful” [..], “reasonable”[..] or “desirable”. Nevertheless, it is for the national authorities to make the initial assessment of the reality of the pressing social need implied by the notion of “necessity” in this context [26].

That’s cleared “necessity” up then! The Court then pointed out that the restricting/qualifying paragraph in Charter rights leaves a “margin of appreciation” to the domestic legislator and domestic bodies called upon to interpret laws in force in the Contracting State.

Proportionality

Meanwhile “proportionality” is a legal concept used in various courts around the world as a tool of weighing and balancing competing interests and seeing which side wins. This has been a tool used in German administrative law following World War Two [27]. The German administrative formulation of proportionality is a 3 stage test made up of a suitability test (the measure used must be suitable for the achievement of the aim), a necessity test (no other milder means could have been used to achieve the aim) and a proportionality/appropriateness bit (the benefit at large must outweigh the injury to the implicated individual).

In 1960 a United States Supreme Court Judge warned that this type of balancing was another tool that would favour state power over individual rights:

“The great danger of the judiciary balancing process is that in times of emergency and stress it gives Government the power to do what it thinks necessary to protect itself, regardless of the rights of individuals. If the need is great, the right of Government can always be said to outweigh the rights of the individual.” [28]

The European Court of Human Rights has often exacerbated this problem by applying proportionality as a single stage test, made up of just the final balancing bit of the German version above.

In the UK public bodies such as the police have very much plumped for the single stage proportionality test that allows them to apply a simple balancing test. A 2011 report [29] on the police’s interpretation of the Human Rights Act found that:

Proportionality was commonly described by officers as posing a very specific question: ‘Am I using a sledgehammer to crack a nut?’

Furthermore police officers felt that the restricting/qualifying paragraph in rights such as the Right to Privacy was useful for facilitating their actions:

“one officer drew attention to the ‘exceptions’ in the HRA (by which he meant the qualifications) as ‘sufficient to give the police the powers that they need to do their job’ “

And the police also saw the compliance with the Human Rights Act as little more than a box ticking exercise:

“A lot of my job involves impinging on people’s private lives and I have to be justifying this all of the time in terms of legality, necessity and proportionality. I am always signing forms saying ‘I have considered human rights’ but I’m not sure we understand what we are signing off.”

Proportionality and Facial Recognition Cameras

A September 2019 High Court case into the Police use of facial recognition cameras illustrates how proportionality is used to protect “essential interests” of the state. The high court judgment used a proportionality test known as the ‘Bank Mellat test’, which added a fourth prong to the three pronged proportionality test and that fourth prong gifted the police with a greater margin of appreciation. I won’t go into all of the gory details here but I have written about this case elsewhere, and it is a good example of the sleight of hand used to attack individual freedoms [30].

As Stavros Tsakyrakis puts it:

“The problem with the rhetoric of balancing in the context of proportionality is that it obscures the moral considerations that are at the heart of human rights issues and thus deprives society of a moral discourse that is indispensable.” [31]

The Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Bill

Which brings us back to the Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Bill and the granting of criminal conduct authorisations only if that conduct is believed to be “necessary and proportionate in the interests of national security, for the purpose of preventing or detecting crime or disorder, or in the interests of the economic well-being of the UK for certain statutory purposes and where it is proportionate to what is sought to be achieved by that conduct.”

We are now in a position to see what this statement means – that the state may protect its “essential interests” and when it is acting to protect these interests, it (the state) can rely on the law of self-defence as it attacks anyone it sees fit to attack to defend said interests. The government is favouring the person attacking the freedoms, the informant, the state’s proxy, who is afforded discretion, margin of appreciation and the benefit of the doubt – because under the Human Rights construct it is the state that is seen as the party who should benefit from the principles of self-defence and it is the individual’s rights that are seen as the attacker that can be repelled when the state or its proxy decides it is “necessary” and “proportionate”.

The Covert Human Intelligence Sources Bill is an odious piece of legislation but the defeat of the Bill will not be enough to restore freedoms. The whole rhetoric of the rights agenda and the use of international law needs to be challenged. The current regulations surrounding house arrests (“lockdowns”) in the UK stem from International Law, namely the WHO (ie the UN), as enacted by the International Health Regulations 2005 [32] that were inserted into the Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984 [33] via the 2008 Health and Social Care Act [34]. We constantly hear politicians say that the introduction of draconian measures is “proportionate” to what they seek to achieve. That their actions are proportionate and necessary, necessary and proportionate, necessary and proportionate, proportionate and necessary, necessary and proportionate… You get the point.

Or do you?

These words are not neutral. This is the language of war, a war in which we the people are viewed as the enemy.

“There is nothing proportionate between the armed and the unarmed”
– Machiavelli, ‘The Prince’ 1532

“Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.”
– William Pitt the Younger, House of Commons 18 November, 1783

Understanding the true meaning of the words at the heart of modern political rhetoric is a crucial step in reclaiming our freedoms.

*

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Notes

[ 1] Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Bill
https://services.parliament.uk/Bills/2019-21/coverthumanintelligencesourcescriminalconduct/documents.html

[ 2] https://www.ipt-uk.com/judgments.asp?id=53
https://www.ipt-uk.com/judgments.asp?id=55

[ 3] https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/cbill/58-01/0188/CHIS%20(CC)%20Bill%20-%20ECHR%20Memo%20FINAL.pdf

[ 4] ‘The 1837-38 Upper Canadian Rebellion’, Australasian Canadian Studies VOL 29, No 1- 2, 2011
http://www.acsanz.org.au/archives/acs29-1-2-2011.pdf

[ 5] ‘Here, There, and Everywhere: Assessing the Proportionality Doctrine and U.S. Uses of Force in Response to Terrorism after the September 11 Attacks’, Michael C. Bonafede, Cornell Law Review 2002
https://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/clr/vol88/iss1/4/

[ 6] 1848, ‘The diplomatic and official papers of Daniel Webster, while secretary of state’, p110
https://archive.org/details/diplomaticoffici00webs/page/n13/mode/2up

[ 7] ‘Commentaries Upon International Law’. Vol. 1, 1854, Robert Phillimore MP, Preface pxix
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.24283/page/n23

[ 8] ‘Association for the Reform and Codification of the Law of Nations :A brief sketch of its formation’, James B. Miles, 1875
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.32044103245734

[ 9] ‘International Arbitration’, House of Lords, 25 July 1887 vol 317 cc1830-4
https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/lords/1887/jul/25/resolution

[10] International Law Commission – https://legal.un.org/ilc/

[11] Article 25, Necessity, ‘Draft articles on Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts’, 2001
https://legal.un.org/ilc/texts/instruments/english/commentaries/9_6_2001.pdf

[12] UN Charter Article 51
https://web.archive.org/web/20050518224007fw_/http://www.un.org/aboutun/charter/chapter7.htm

[13] p11, Report of the Royal Commission Appointed to Consider the Law Relating to Indictable Offences (1879) (C. 2345)
http://www.lareau-legal.ca/EnglishDraftCodeONE.pdf

[14] 1889 Dicey, Introduction to the law of the constitution, 3rd edition, p406-408
https://archive.org/details/introductiontos04dicegoog/page/n424

[15] ‘Beyond Wednesbury: Substantive Principles of Administrative Law’, Jeffrey Jowell and Anthony Lester, Administrative Law’ (1988) 14 Commw L Bull 858
https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/commwlb14&div=32

[16] Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008, section 76 ‘Reasonable force for purposes of self-defence etc’
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2008/4/contents

[17] The establishment of the European Movement
https://www.cvce.eu/recherche/unit-content/-/unit/en/04bfa990-86bc-402f-a633-11f39c9247c4/272166ae-84b2– 466b-9cfa-4df511389208

[18] See A. W. Brian Simpson, Human Rights and the End of Empire: Britain and the Genesis of the European Convention (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001)

[19] UK Cabinet Papers, CP. (50) 2 11, 20th September, 1950
http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/D7656043

[20] 1939 Emergency Powers (Defence) Act
Text of the Bill, From The Times, Friday, August 25, 1939
http://ww2talk.com/index.php?threads/defence-regulations-emergency-powers-defence-act.19087/

[21] ‘Innocent III and the Ius commune’
http://legalhistorysources.com/Medieval%20Papacy/InnocentIuscom.htm
‘Necessity and National Emergency Clauses’, Diane A. Desierto, BRILL, 2012, Chapter 3 ‘The Historical Genesis of Necessity Doctrine’ ‘State of Exception’, Chapter 1, Giorgio Agamben, The University of Chicago Press, 2005

[22] ‘The origins of Emergency Powers Acts in the UK’, Statewatch 2012
https://www.statewatch.org/news/2003/june/statewatch-news-online-the-origins-of-emergency-powers-acts-in-the– uk/

[23] See A. W. Brian Simpson, Human Rights and the End of Empire: Britain and the Genesis of the European Convention (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), Chapter 16

[24] However, as always happens, the UK has applied these minimum standards as a maximum and has thus used the Convention to lower the rights and freedoms of people in the UK (see for instance the increased powers of arrest contained in the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 (SOCPA)
https://www.theyworkforyou.com/pbc/2004-05/Serious_Organised_Crime_and_Police_Bill/05-0_2005-01– 18a.3.0#g4.49

[25] Memorandum of evidence by Cedric Thornberry, Governor of the British Institute of Human Rights, paragraph 21,Minutes of evidence taken before the Select Committee on a Bill of Rights (p224-239), HMSO 1977

[26] Paragraph 48, Case of Handyside v The United Kingdom, 7th December 1976
http://hudoc.echr.coe.int/eng?i=001-57499

[27] “Three Aspects of Proportionality”, Margit Cohn, paper presented at VIII Congress of the International Association of Constitutional Law, Mexico City, December 2010
‘Proportionality Balancing and Global Constitutionalism’, Alec Stone Sweet and Jud Mathews, 2008
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1569344

[28] ‘The Bill of Rights’, Hugo L. Black, New York University Law Review, 1960

[29] ‘The Impact of the Human Rights Act 1998 on Policing in England and Wales’, Karen Bullock, Paul Johnson, British Journal of Criminology, (2012) 52, 630–650
https://doi.org/10.1093/bjc/azr088

[30] ‘”Proportionality” used to rubber-stamp mass surveillance in Sept 2019 Live Facial Recognition JR’, No CCTV
http://www.no-cctv.org.uk/blog/proportionality_used_to_rubber-stamp_mass_surveillance_in_sept_2019_live_facial_recognition_jr.htm

[31] ‘Proportionality: An Assault on Human Rights?’, Stavros Tsakyrakis
http://jeanmonnetprogram.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/080901.pdf

[32] UN Interational Health Regulations 2005
https://www.who.int/ihr/9789241596664/en/
International Health Regulations: Activity of the UK National Focal Point from 2012 to 2016
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/672447/International_Health_Regulations.pdf

[33] Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1984/22/contents

[34] Health and Social Care Act 2008
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2008/14/part/3
HoC Library Research Paper 07/81
https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/RP07-81/RP07-81.pdf

A Moscow-based public policy advisor specializing in Russia, the Eurasian Union and Africa explains some of the aspects of current Russia-Africa relations, problems and challenges, as well as its future perspectives. While over the past two decades, Russia’s efforts to regain its Soviet-era influence in Africa have achieved success, times have changed significantly, according to Nataliya Zaiser, Founder and CEO of Africa Business Initiative (ABI).

Since March 2016, Zaiser has been the Chair (Head) of Africa Business Initiative (ABI), created with the support of Russian businesses as a platform for humanitarian, economic and legal expertise aimed at strengthening relations between Russia and Africa. The main goal of this organization is to unite efforts in promoting and supporting the interests of Russian businesses within the framework of broader international cooperation on the territory of the African continent.

In this exclusive interview, Nataliya Zaiser explains some of the aspects of the current Russia-African relations, problems and challenges, and its future perspectives with Kester Kenn Klomegah in Moscow.

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Kester Kenn Klomegah: As one of the participants, what were some of the significant questions raised during the roundtable discussions on Russia and Africa?

Nataliya Zaiser: The roundtable was very interesting. Both sides (Russian and African) demonstrated a strong desire for cooperation. We talked about some specifics: about the main economic sectors that various African countries are interested in most; about business diversification away from a focus on mining and oil and gas towards infrastructure projects, telecommunications and biotechnologies.

We spoke about the need to encourage the participation of small and medium-size businesses in Africa; about bilateral cooperation; about the importance of the legal aspects of all these and about improving the system of legal regulation of projects, from customs and tax matters to export licenses.

The panelists also touched on enhancing cooperation with Africa in the global fight against drugs and epidemiological diseases, and combating terrorism. We listened to the companies that are active and successful on the continent; they shared some of their experiences, particularly good practice in building business relationships.

KKK: Why have Russia’s efforts to regain its economic influence achieved little success, why is soft power softer than in Soviet days?

NZ: We shouldn’t say whether power is “softer” or “harder” than in the days of the Soviet Union. It’s just different. Times have changed significantly: new economic and political environment, new challenges, new competitive conditions, new bases for cooperation. People are different, minds are different, technologies are different.

In all that, we have to find absolutely different approaches and strategies to building business relationships. What remains the same is a will, a very loyal mutual attitude between Russia and African countries and a strong desire to push forward these mutual efforts.

KKK: In your expert view, looking at Russia’s economic power, its global status and its staunch membership of the BRICS bloc, how would you assess its current investment and business engagement with Africa?

NZ: Many organizations are trying to solve local problems and find ways for business cooperation with the African continent. The issue of investment looms, perhaps, particularly largely. I think that in cooperating with African states, organizations can be guided by an approach of shared responsibility, including the financial aspects.

Russia is clearly showing that open partnership with and support of Africa remains a priority. In the current conditions, it will seek ways of co-financing, co-investment and co-partnership. There may also be opportunities too for international partnerships, whether BRICS or any other groupings, formal or otherwise, on African projects.

KKK: Some policy experts have attributed Russia’s economic policy setbacks to the lack of a system of projects and business financing. For instance, China has set up the China Africa Development Fund as one major source of support and is implementing its projects in Africa. What are your views about this?

NZ: Russia has developed a number of business councils for cooperation both with individual African countries as well as with its own regions and neighbors. For Africa in particular, the Africa Business Initiative offers the chance of a consolidated approach, and an independent organization that can work with the business community in Russia and at the same time combine the interests of the diplomatic community, the state, academic views and so forth.

KKK: At this stage, when Russia is feverishly struggling to raise its economic profile through dialogues and consultations at the state level, do you suggest that Russia’s financial institutions, especially the banks, get involved in financing corporate projects on the continent?

NZ: Investors and lenders today understand the potential benefits of investing in emerging markets like African countries. They also understand the critical importance of addressing the political and economic risks that may accompany an investment in such markets. This is the work which needs to be carried out. MIGA (Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency) is one of the biggest international organizations, for example, that helps investors and lenders to deal with such risks by insuring eligible projects against losses.

In Russia, there’s EXIAR (the Russian Agency for Export Credit and Investment Insurance) which was established in late 2011 as Russia’s first ever export credit agency. I’m sure it has big potential and expect that they will look closely at African projects to support Russian business and guarantee the insurance and safety of their investments.

In any case, for a start, it’s important that Russia becomes a member or starts cooperation with key major African organizations, such as the African Development Bank, the African Union, the NEPAD [New Partnership for Africa’s Development], etc. That will significantly extend the boundaries for Russian-African business opportunities.

KKK: We’ve been talking about economic diplomacy between Russia and Africa. And it’s also important to look at the relations as a two-way street. Could you please explain the possible reasons why African business is extremely low or completely absent, compared to Asian countries, in the Russian Federation?

NZ: This is a good question that I want to address to you as a representative of the African diaspora. Of course, this is a bilateral cooperation. Russia is open. Africa has much to offer Russia, which is a large country and has excellent prospects in the regions, many of which are developing very rapidly and are ready to accept new partnerships, and discuss forms of cooperation.

Moreover, the Russian regions are facing similar problems to several African countries: the development of the agricultural sector, technological investment and progress that will support a rise in the standard of living of the population. There’s a good case for creating a specific program (a roadmap if you will) for cooperation between African countries and the Russian regions.

KKK: As a Founder and CEO of Africa Business Initiative (ABI), what would you say about the prospects of the Eurasian Economic Community (Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Armenia and Kyrgyzstan)? Explain further what African countries can make out of this economic bloc.

NZ: There’s often a compelling case for neighboring countries to get together and engage in some kind of union because it can facilitate and stimulate trade relations, reducing barriers without overloading them with tax and customs issues, bureaucratic procedures and other things that may mitigate mutual economic progress.

I’s sure Africa will take an active part in working with the Eurasian Union as with other international or supra-national organizations and alliances because this kind of cooperation opens the gates to wider initiatives.

With an understanding of key legal, economic and political issues that surround doing business in Africa, we’ve established ourselves as a premier firm for Africa-based transactions offering in-depth market knowledge, extensive experience and unique transactions and public policy combination that helps companies to achieve their African business strategies.

KKK: Finally, tell us more about the Africa Business Initiative (ABI), why it has become necessary at this time, its primary roles or tasks and its overall future plans.

NZ: The Africa Business Initiative was launched and initiated primarily by businesses in Russia. The concept behind this is to develop a focal point for the promotion of business interests which would consolidate the efforts of existing structures: diplomats, scientists, academics, consultants and so on.

The key participation of Institute for African Studies, as a serious platform for research, analysis and database, means that we can add significant insight to the actual experience of corporations that are successfully working on the ground.

The main goal is to create a pool of economic expertise aimed at revitalizing the “chemistry” in African-Russian business relationships. It has been widely acknowledged many times that Africa is on the path towards economic prosperity. The economies of many African states are becoming more balanced and there have been a lot of institutional transformations.

We need to fundamentally accelerate the approach, backed by a program of long-term trade, geo-economic relations and strategy that would keep pace with the ambitions of individual states. What the African continent needs now is the broad development of infrastructure, agriculture, consumer goods, health care and information technology.

The Africa Business Initiative can help outline an approach for Russian companies to come to the African market as a whole, as reliable business partners. Through this framework, it will be able to consolidate the interests of companies in different sectors; to address and promote the development of a common position on a whole range of issues; to establish joint strategic initiatives and to expand its presence in the investment field. The task is not to duplicate or simulate the activity of state bodies.

The participation of and partnership with the Institute for African Studies is very important. Historically, the institute has been and remains the alma mater for many Africans. It has the most powerful research base in Russia and a deep knowledge about developments on the continent.

Education and increasing awareness among Russian businesses is key. To understand the features of successful business in Africa, people should be well-versed in the social and political organization of all African countries, especially in their internal relationships, geographical peculiarities, and culture, in legislation, public administration, and so on.

The role of the institute, as a partner to Africa Business Initiative, is to provide maximum assistance. Good knowledge of the legal field, regulation, competent interaction with decision-makers and government structures of African states – all these constitute the key to a mutually beneficial and balanced cooperation. The Africa Business Initiative allows us to assist businesses in broader international cooperation, involving foreign colleagues and contacts that are interested in doing business in Africa.

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Featured image is from Kester Kenn Klomegah

In early December, Trump regime DNI John Ratcliffe defied reality saying:

“China poses the greatest threat to America today (sic), and the greatest threat to democracy and freedom world-wide since World War II (sic),” adding:

“Beijing intends to dominate the US and the rest of the planet economically, militarily and technologically (sic).”

A further litany of bald-faced Big Lies followed.

Whenever US officials criticize sovereign independent nations, managed news misinformation and disinformation propaganda follows.

Throughout the post-WW II period, no nations threatened US national security — not China, Russia, Iran, or any others.

Claims otherwise are false.

In response to Ratcliffe’s remarks, China’s US embassy called them “fact-distorting” rubbish, reflecting Cold War ideological prejudice, adding:

No nation more greatly warrants being called the “empire of hacking and spying” than hegemonic USA.

China’s Foreign Ministry accused Ratcliffe of repeating long ago debunked Big Lies.

The US wages permanent wars by hot and/or other means on all nations unwilling to subordinate their sovereign rights to a higher power in Washington.

A new Pentagon report titled “US Maritime Strategy: Advantage at Sea” called China and Russia the greatest threats to US naval power, with emphasis on the former, saying:

“We prioritize competition with China due to its growing economic and military strength, increasing aggressiveness (sic), and demonstrated intent to dominate its regional waters and remake the international order in its favor (sic).”

“China is the only rival with the combined economic and military potential to present a long-term, comprehensive challenge to the United States.”

“Naval Service operations and force posture will focus on countering PRC malign behavior (sic) globally and strengthening regional deterrence in the Indo-Pacific region.”

“Malign behavior” describes how the US operates domestically and on the world stage — not China, Russia, Iran, or other nations on its target list for regime change.

According to the Pentagon report, the US “must operate more assertively to prevail in day-to-day competition as we uphold the rules-based order (sic) and deter our competitors from pursuing armed aggression (sic).”

“If our rivals escalate into conflict, becoming our adversaries, we must control the seas to deny their objectives, defeat their forces, protect our homeland and defend our allies.”

The unacceptable above remarks suggest further escalation of US war by other means on China and other countries, risking direct confrontation.

It could be sparked in East Asia by what the Pentagon calls “freedom of navigation” operations.

They’re provocative US military drills near Chinese waters.

Imagine how the US and its Western partners would react if Chinese, Russian, or Iranian warships conducted military exercises in the Gulf of Mexico and/or off America’s east or west coasts.

Bipartisan hardliners in Washington and establishment media would likely call them provocatively assertive and aggressive, demanding they be countered.

The Pentagon report vowed greater US Indo/Pacific visibility, claiming its increased presence in a part of the world not its own will “detect…document, (and perhaps act to deter) our (regional rival).”

US warships in the region will “adopt a more assertive posture in our day-to-day operations” — heightening the risk of possible clashes that could escalate to war.

About 60% of US naval forces operate in the Indo-Pacific, the Pentagon report explained.

According to a South China Sea Probing Initiative (SCSPI) that tracks the Pentagon’s regional presence and movements, the US greatly increased its naval and aerial operations near China in the last decade.

It nearly doubled its aerial reconnaissance activities near Chinese sea and land borders — flying around 1,500 South China Sea sorties annually.

“According to (SCSPI monitoring), the US military significantly enhanced the frequency of activities in the region by boosting the presence of surface vessels by more than 60 percent (since 2009), reaching about 1,000 ship-days a year.”

Hostile US actions dangerously push the envelope toward eventual confrontation with China.

Irreconcilable differences define bilateral relations.

Strategic mistrust appears irreversible.

Neither country wants unthinkable war because of potentially catastrophic consequences.

Despite going all-out for peace and cooperative relations with the US and West, the risk of direct confrontation with China is dangerously real.

Increasing US hostility and distrust toward Beijing makes the unthinkable possible.

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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image is from InfoBrics